Protocols of the Boorish Australian of Malibu

The fledgling Third World War has been surpassed by noted Romanist Mel Gibson in the lead position of this week’s media cycle. Gibson’s discourse on the nature of World Jewry and its various cabals makes sense when one considers his social history. His father, Hutton Gibson, maintains a worldview that is one part Marge Schott and two parts St. Gregory of Nyssa with a heavy splash of Heinrich Himmler. But everyone knows the Holocaust never happened, so let’s not lose the forest for the trees on this.

Fresh and appropriate controversies over “The Passion of the Christ” have erupted again. Is it anti-Semitic? Probably. Does that have anything do to with Mel Gibson? Probably not. It has more to do with the interpretation of Ponitus Pilate’s words in the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the crucifixion. "When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this Man's blood; see to that yourselves.'” (Matthew 27:24). Later generations distilled this into a catchier, “The Jews killed Jesus.” Nevermind the facts that Jesus himself was a Jew and early Christians considered themselves practitioners of a new form of Judaism. Everyone knows facts are only a minor part of any equation.

Apart from Gibson’s dreadful beliefs put on display for all the world to see, this incident hasn’t provided insight on anything. “The Passion of the Christ” is a proxy war for a very old controversy, which bears some relation to other, similar proxy wars.

The bigger unreported problem with “The Passion of the Christ” is its bizarre placement of human sacrifice in the center of a worldview warmly embraced by millions and millions of Americans. It is impossible to avoid hearing “Jesus died for your sins” or some variation thereof in the public space. T-shirts with bloody hands reading “His pain, your gain” are common. Reasonable people, especially reasonable Christians, should confront this horrible idea forcefully.

The Beatitudes (aka the Sermon on the Mount) are considered the centerpiece of Christ’s teaching. It encourages gentleness and a turning away from the violent conventions of this world. At no point does Jesus say “I am to be killed as a sacrifice to appease God, who really wants to kill you instead.” Yet this has somehow become the central feature of evangelical Christianity, which seems to pick this idea up from later writings in the Christian movement like John’s gospel and the writings of St. Paul.

Not only is this worldview in no way faithful to Jesus, it is a particularly nasty way of inoculating its followers against violence and murder. By the logic of Christianists, the default fate of all souls is to burn forever in a lake of fire for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Most souls will suffer for an eternity, but God, being merciful and loving, arranged for his son to be flogged, stabbed and nailed to a tree to set everything straight. As soon as you come to understand that as a loving act of redemption, your own soul will be spared. The consequences of this belief system on civil society speak for themselves.