Reaction to Mel Gibson

I watched with great interest as the Christian world reacted yesterday to Gibson’s interview on Primetime. As I expected, he was the talk of the blogging world yesterday. Meandean over at Blogs4God compiled a partial list of bloggers who wrote about Gibson. (You will have to scroll down a little bit to find the article).

Based on what I read on those blogs and on various forums around the Internet there are three main views of the interview.

1. Gibson did a great job defending his faith and defending the movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths were taken from a different interview and were used grossly out of context. He certainly believes no such thing.
2. Gibson did a great job defending his faith and defending the movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths were unfortunate but do not reflect his true beliefs.
3. Gibson did a poor job defending his faith and an adequate job defending this movie. His comments about salvation being open to all faiths show that he has little to no understanding of the gospel. He should not be held as an example of a Christian and the movie should be judged on its own merits rather than as a movie made by a Christian.

I received quite a few comments on the article I wrote here. I agree with many of them and especially with what Leslie posted. She said “Let us not hold Mel Gibson up as some beacon of Christianity or somehow tout this movie as worthy because Mel was allegedly inspired to make it.” She also said “Secondly and more importantly,the real take-away from this movie will come near its end when Jesus says on the cross “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. This is the starting point for helping a non-believer understand the redemptive nature of Jesus and His sacrifice. Instead of crying “Revenge”, Jesus cried “Forgive”. Therein lies the difference between Jesus and all of humanity, past, present and future. Focus the non-believer on that point and you are off to a good start.” I agree. Let’s get Mel out of the equation and take the movie on its own.