As I sat in the movie theater watching "The Passion" unfold, I got the feeling one gets when one realizes the amusement park ride they are on is not going to be as easy to stomach as they had hoped, and that the resulting queasiness is probably going to hang on for a while.

After the movie, I felt a deep anger, the source of which I couldn’t figure out. I originally thought it was because the depiction was so gut-wrenchingly horrible that it must have been exaggerated. But, discussions with physicians and those more knowledgeable in such matters than I, which made it clear that the real thing actually was much worse than the portrayal, did nothing to assuage me.

Over time, I came to realize that the source of my anger was the sub-conscious realization that despite the spiritual enormity of what I had just witnessed, those who were using the film not as a theological illustration but as a political tool just don’t get it. Either they actually don’t get it, or they do get it, but just don’t care.

Those who believe, as I do, that Jesus truly is the human incarnation of the One, True God know that with just a wiggle of His pinky His tormenters would have been toast. Those who don’t believe in the Divinity of Christ cannot deny that with just a word or two from Jesus the persecutors would have dismissed Him as a lunatic, and all would have been over. Either way, He voluntarily went through the most horrific torture imaginable, and, either way, He forgave his murderers and never spoke a word of anger toward them.

Those whom I have heard already distorting for political gain the subject of the film and what it represents – O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, to name a few – either cannot fully wrap their minds around the purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice and the lessons of His example, or they do indeed possess the intellectual capacity, but either lack the spiritual understanding or purposefully distort it. Hence, the source of my anger.

These are people who scream about the immorality of abortion, but praise as a hero a President whose environmental and economic policies will cause the suffering and death of thousands of children and vulnerable adults every year; a man who spouts "Right to Life" rhetoric, but who smilingly presided over more state-sponsored executions that any governor in history (except for maybe his brother); who refused to grant clemency to an inmate even after DNA evidence proved him innocent, forcing the man to agonize on Death Row until a court could free him; who has lied, cheated and stolen his way through life (his Harken Energy analog to the Martha Stewart situation, for example, netted him almost 20 times more profit and was even more illegal since he specifically was forewarned not to do it) to amass his personal fortune; who made public displays of prayer while knowingly and skillfully fabricating and distorting evidence to dupe a huge chunk of the American masses into supporting his war, which has unnecessarily killed and maimed tens of thousands and has sucked hundreds of billions of dollars from schools, healthcare, public infrastructure work that could have employed millions, international programs that could have fostered good will and therefore truly made us safer, and other programs that I bet Jesus would have been a whole lot happier with than a policy that was initially introduced with, "F___ Saddam. We’re taking him out!"

We impeached a President over a tryst, but are too scared of being labeled "Unpatriotic" to even censure a President who has brought us to the brink of ethical and financial bankruptcy. We spent tens of millions of dollars and monopolized hours of a President’s time investigating mythical financial dealings which revealed absolutely no wrongdoing, and in which the President actually lost money, but offer no protest when Condoleezza Rice says on "Meet the Press" that the President’s time is so valuable that an hour is all he can afford for the 9/11 commission.

These are not personal attacks, as supporters of the administration complain. These are criticisms leveled at public actions and public policies which have done more harm to our economic and environmental welfare that I can adequately describe; have done more to erode international good will than I would have thought possible; and have been built on more lies, deceptions and opportunistic policy flip-flops than I can count.

But, I guess that for many these things don’t matter. After all, there’s the possibility that there might be two guys around the corner who want to get married, or the little girl in the news who was raped and impregnated by her step-father, who might want to get an abortion without parental consent. And, didn’t we each get a few hundred dollar tax rebate last summer?

The real lessons we should learn from "The Passion" are peace, kindness, charity, love, etc. Conversely, the mantra we hear from our President is "war, strength, vengeance, pride, tax cuts..." I think there is something very wrong with our priorities.

Elliot M. Namay, Jr.

As published in the Charleston Gazette, April, 2004