PREACHING TO THE CHOIR; Gibson's Passion is all pain, no gain

First of all: don't believe the hype. All the inane local and national newscasts portraying Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ as an organic extension of "Christianity" as a whole are as misguided as they are shallow. The Passion is a specific, sectarian interpretation in which all Christians outside of Gibson's inner circle should be hesitant to let speak for them. Yes, Gibson puts all the right King James version catch phrases in the right places to make his Jesus seem familiar, but his "A day in the death" vision is more telling in what it leaves out than what it includes.

The most obvious and eerily prophetic reference with which to begin dissecting The Passion is a 2000 …