This accords with the contemplative path as well. Our personal religious enthusiasm, our mysticism - we may be certain of these, but what do they mandate of us other than love? It is when religion becomes attached to myth - whose details we can only be certain of through an leap of personal faith, i.e., not verifiable, not externally provable - that other mandates are created. Those are precisely the mandates which, says Locke, must be strictly examined and made to conform with reason. No one died as a result of mysticism. People die when mysticism is married to myth, religion, and power, without ample compassion, wisdom and skill to counterbalance them.

We may feel most certain when we are angry, inflamed by violent imagery. But that is precisely the worst time to act. In fact, it is precisely the time to question. Therefore, it is neither skillful, nor wise, nor compassionate to invite people into a movie theater and broil up their passions in the context of a myth with living enemies. If anything, it is irresponsible. Let go of doubt when you are dancing, praying, or painting. Invite it back in when you are thinking of harming another - or inflaming his passions with a heartfelt but deeply disturbed vision of Divine sacrifice.

I feel the power of Christ myself, although I do not generally express it in those mythical terms. I feel the presence of forgiveness in my own life, and understand how it is possible for a perfectly enlightened being to be the Son of God. It is, in a way, a beautiful myth, and I was inspired by its rendition in The Passion. But because that power of Christ, the power of the One, is married to a myth of violence, and a myth with venal enemies of whom I myself am one, I fear the film much more than I love it. It is as if a great inspiration and also a great evil has been simultaneously unleashed on the world.

Gibson's often brilliant film illustrates much of what is beautiful about religion, and much of what is terrible about it. The radiance, healing, and love that are born of mysticism, and also the violence and the hatred that spring from it, nourished by it, when that energy becomes attached to a fixed and fundamentalist myth. And most of all, the power, the strength, the source of the ecstasy and of the evil: passion.

[1]       [2]       [3]       [4]       5 Image: Salvador Dali, Christ of St. John of the Cross

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Jay Michaelson is Chief Editor of Zeek Magazine and author of Antilawyerism, Antisemitism, and the Secret History of the Soul.

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