Mel Gibson Needs to Cool Off

I spend more time than I should paying attention to "entertainment news", which isn't really news. It's gossip, and juicy details about the various meltdowns of celebrities from all walks of life. Whatever an actor does when they aren't acting falls under the category of "entertainment news". Whatever a professional athlete does besides athletics usually does too. Admittedly, it's more interesting than a lot of what you'll watch on C-SPAN.

One of the more recent meltdowns (or re-meltdowns) has been Mel Gibson's. Remember a few years ago? He got arrested on a DUI and proceeded to tell the arresting officer why Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world. Back at the station, he addressed a female police office as "sugar t*ts". Part of his damage control was to point out that he was a family man and a good Catholic. Exhibit "A" was his wife of thirty years and their bah-zillion kids. Take THAT, Brad and Angelina!

He had the good sense to shut the hell up for a little while after that. He released "Apocolypto", which did okay considering nobody spoke any English. Then he left his wife and took up with a Russian model, and had a kid out of wedlock. Since then, he's been recording verbally abusing her, wishing she'd get gang-raped and telling her she deserved to get hit.

Yawn.

What got me writing today wasn't the need to parrot back what you could have read anywhere. Believe me, I just glossed over the highlights. If you want the real dirt, visit any one of a hundred different web sites, all dishing the dirt. What got me writing was in the comment section, which read in part " the real reason this article was written, is that the writer and the elitists in general hate Christianity (which Mel Gibson represents...)"

Wow. Really?

Let me say first, that I am not a Christian. I was once, but I'm not now. (Long story, ask me later.) It seems as if the person who made that comment feels the anti-Mel writings have more to do with settling a score with Christianity in general and uses its most public representative, Mel Gibson, to make that happen. It makes me wonder if the commenter was hinting that the anti-Mel backlash in the press recently isn't some cleverly orchestrated comeuppance by the Jewish community.

What bugs me is the idea that anyone can represent a religion. In the case of Christianity, you've got Jesus, and then you've got everybody else interpreting who Jesus was, what Jesus was all about, and doing their best to emulate that. Because as Christians - followers of Christ - one would think that you could gauge your performance as a follower by how well you emulate the leader. Now apart from laying hands on the sick or walking on water, I think the best way one could emulate Jesus would be to attend to the sick, to feed the hungry, to offer encouragement to the downtrodden, to not sit in judgment of others, and so on. But don't take my word for it - if you really want to know how best to emulate Jesus - in other words, to be a Christian - then get it from the source. Read the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That ought to be enough to get you started. Do what he would do, say what he would say, and avoid doing or saying stuff he probably wouldn't have done or said. From what I've read, there isn't a lot of mystery to it. You can take what you see at face value.

Understand that to me, it makes no difference if you're a Christian or not. I just don't care. But it seems to me that if every self-proclaimed "Christian" out there were to suddenly and genuinely dedicate themselves to be as much like Jesus the man as they possibly could, there would be a lot less war, a lot less televangelism, a lot less judging, a lot less violence, a lot less homeless, a lot less racism, a lot more caring about the environment, a lot more concern over health care (especially for the young and the poor), a lot less corruption, and a lot less Mel Gibsons in general.

Of course, I could be wrong.