Last night I finally watched The Passion of the Christ. I’ve seen a lot of violent, sadistic torture movies in my day, and I can say with little hyperbole in my words that the torment and torture in The Passion was the worst; but I’m not referring to the beating and murder of Jesus of Nazareth; I’m talking about the three and a half hour guilt trip laid on the world by Gibson of Hollywood. The Passion is at its very essence an entire childhood of Bible-thumping condensed into several hours of bloodshed.

I’ll be honest: I felt more sympathy as I watched the severe beating of Mel Gibson himself when Jet Li roughed him up at the end of Lethal Weapon 4. Now there was a classic ass-kicking! And what about the torture and beheading of William Wallace in Braveheart? Tell me, Mr. Gibson, what happened to humoring the audience with a little character development before the director starts tearing living tissue off the ribs of his protagonist? I suppose that one might assume that everybody knows the story of Jesus’ life and all of his great deeds, but one would be wrong. Infinitely more time is spent doting on Jesus’ death than on his life. Is it just me, or do Christians just not find his teachings all that interesting?

I did feel bad for Jesus when I watched The Passion. I felt bad for Him just like I felt bad for the Japanese tourist in Hostel when her eye was burnt out with a blow torch; I felt bad for Him the way I felt bad for Robocop when his limbs were separated from his body with an elephant gun; I felt bad for Him the same way I felt bad for the man in Audition when his fiancé cut his feet off with piano wire; but throughout The Passion a feeling kept creeping up on me that Mr. Gibson wanted me to feel guilty because Christ willingly endured a slow and painful death to cleanse me of my sins. Christians reading this are probably saying “well, duh.” You folks go and pray for me. Everyone else, keep reading.

Now I know, I know: according to the New Testament that’s the way all it went down. The script was already written centuries before Mad Max got his hands on it and he took surprisingly few liberties in his cinematic rendition of the death of Christ. So why am I being so hard on The Passion? Because The Passion was so hard on it’s audience. Am I supposed to be thankful that Christ died for my sins? Am I supposed to feel guilty that I sin at all? If God created man, then God also created our sinful nature. If God exists, I’m not asking Him to forgive me for nor will I feel guilt over actions that He himself programmed me to perform. God would probably just laugh if I repented anyway: “forgive me father, for I have drank Jack Daniels and sang the wrong words to That’s Amore at karaoke.” A real commandment breaker, I am.

I presume you need to be a strong Christian going into The Passion to truly enjoy it, if enjoy is even the correct verb to use in conjunction with watching the torture of someone you love. I suppose if I were a good Christian then watching The Passion would give me the same masochistic pleasure as scratching open poison ivy or picking a scab, but that’s just not me.