Your True Reflection!

For a year before its release, and especially in the last month, Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" has been incredibly unfairly prejudged by those who give lip service to fairness and against prejudice. Jesus laughs at the spectacle. Now the film is being shown publicly and viewers are reporting experiences all over the spectrum of experience, but almost always with one adjective: "powerful." Jesus continues to laugh because he knows the film is serving a perfect purpose and its purpose has nothing to do with teaching you can find your true reflection in suffering.

Mel Gibson says he felt compelled to make this movie in much the same way that Ray Kinsella felt guided to mow down his corn and build a baseball field. Human beings following spiritual guidance is not uncommon. With the possible exception of self-styled "intellectuals" who live for no other reason than the furthering of some meaningless social agenda devised by human minds, most people eventually do what their spirit compels them to do, then wait ... and see what happens.

What happens is inevitably healing. Ray Kinsella, in "Field of Dreams," was able to forgive himself for creating a sense of separation between himself and his father. Mel Gibson tells us his own deep wounds were healed by willingness to feel the suffering of Jesus, a healing gift he wanted to pass on to everyone.

How politically incorrect is following one's spirit and being healed? Those who pass themselves off as "thinkers" scream bloody murder! Newsweek magazine concocts a slant which makes the events of 2,000 years ago appear to align with their socializing agenda, the "spinning of history" like the spinning of a spider web. The Christian teaching of following spiritual guidance is labeled "troublesome," a code word for anything which might make it difficult for them maintain thought control.

Jesus' refusal to see anything as "troublesome" so completely enrages the intellectual establishment that they now openly support anything that promises to tear down Christianity. Since their entire self-proclaimed "progressive" agenda is based on fear and relies on fear-peddling, anyone who teaches fear not (as Jesus teaches) becomes the enemy.

If Jesus can suffer the pain of the entire world and still say, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," then we can all breathe a sigh of relief and admit there is nothing to fear, which is the underlying teaching of "The Passion." There is nothing to fear, even unto brutal beating and death. Is it any wonder that biased media organizations like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times will twist straightforward truth into pretzels if they think it will help discredit the movie or vilify Mel Gibson?

Christians have walked out of first week showings sobbing deeply, admitting they felt incomprehensible gratitude and love when they are faced with the magnitude of Jesus suffering and dying for their sins. Who could be so closed-down as to not appreciate incomprehensible gratitude and love? An editor of Time Magazine? A news anchor for CNN?

Even non-Christians who have seen the early showings say this movie awakens deep inside themselves a passionate desire to experience the totality of love and forgiveness which Jesus experienced. To think that someday entire populations might live in total love and forgiveness ... what kind of mind would not want such a movie to succeed in its mission? The mind of a CBS commentator?

On the other hand, if buried somewhere in their shrieking against Mel Gibson's movie these so-called "intelligentsia" happen to mention that Christ's passion was never the most important element of Christianity anyway, Jesus laughs. All along he forgave them for not knowing what they do, and now he thanks them for a bit of accurate reporting. Any person can choose death. But there wouldn't even be a Christianity without Christ's resurrection and ascension.

For all the physical healing and emotional relief, the mind opening, deep understanding, and inner peace that comes from joining Jesus in his passion, for all this seeming magnitude, Jesus' crucifixion does little more than set up the preconditions of Christianity. Everything really important is yet to come! A glorious dawn is experienced with deeper gratitude and joy after an especially lightless night.

Here's the way Jesus puts it in A COURSE IN MIRACLES, his modern revelation for the 21st Century:

"The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did. Many sincere Christians have not understood this.... I have been correctly referred to as 'the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,' but those who represent the lamb as blood-stained do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence.... The lamb 'taketh away the sins of the world' in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent." (ACIM: Text, Chapter 3)

Jesus in his Course explains that all of us are as capable of total innocence as himself. We are all equal children of God, seemingly human beings but in reality spiritual beingness. Jesus calls himself our "elder brother" who shows the way.

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death.... The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell.... All living hearts are tranquil with a stir of deep anticipation, for the time of everlasting things is now at hand. There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in his freedom is the end of fear." (ACIM: Manual for Teachers)

Now we laugh at the silly idea that "nothing is inevitable but death and taxes." The resurrection teaches us the way out of the human condition of sin, sickness, suffering, and death (not to mention taxes). Media aristocracy and the government-worshipping intellectual establishment hate it when Jesus says neither death nor taxes are inevitable ... but both must inevitably disappear.

As equal children of God, who in reality are the same as Jesus, we all take upon ourselves the sins of the entire world, every day, every moment. Even modern Quantum Physics tells us that if pain is felt anywhere, it is felt everywhere. So what? It's not the taking on of sins that matters. What matters is rising above sin altogether. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt. 5:48)

As far back as Biblical days Jesus always used the word "sin" to refer to a certain kind of mistake (any thought, word, or deed divorced from spirit), a mistake not only forgiven but corrected by God in the same moment it occurs. To God, Who is all love and only love, mistakes simply have no bearing on reality. What matters to God is that His children come Home. Rising above sin is the resurrection, which makes possible the ascension Home.

The resurrection culminates in impossible joy! Peace which passes all intellectual understanding is a momentary state as we rise out of sickness, death and suffering. Unfathomable love is experienced as we are lifted higher. Transcendent joy beyond any temptation to return to earth is the arrival Home in Heaven.

Yet Jesus' angels tell us we have only dreamed of being away from Home:

"There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity.... The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God." (ACIM: Manual for Teachers)

By his example, Jesus teaches us how to look beyond surface appearances and see Who we really are.

"In his complete identification with the Christ-- the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and one with Him-- Jesus became what all of you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it.... Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you." (ACIM: Manual for Teachers)

Do you want to see the reflection of who you really are? If so, ask with all your heart and soul to know the complete meaning of these words of Jesus: