"The truth? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
– Colonel Jessup in the movie A Few Good Men, 1992

Predictably, Mel Gibson's horrific masterpiece, The Passion of the Christ, has run afoul of critics on several counts.

Some say the movie is unnecessarily violent, that the prolonged, brutal beating of Jesus is excessive and the primary reason the film has been rated "R" in some jurisdictions.

On the surface, it sounds like an objection with merit.

Indeed, when I first viewed the film at a pre-screening last January, I experienced certain unsettling sensations I'd never before encountered while watching any movie.

For a period of about five minutes in the middle of the drama, I battled intense nausea and wondered if I would have to make a hasty exit to the restroom. I recall thinking to myself, "If I hear the sound of that whip one more time, I'm going to scream!"

Immediately after watching the movie and for several hours thereafter, I felt as if someone had kneed me in the solar plexus, then followed that with a kick to the groin.

So is The Passion of the Christ unjustifiably graphic?

Not if you take the time to read Isaiah 52:13-53:12:

"…beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know he was a person…wounded and crushed…beaten…whipped…oppressed and treated harshly…led as a lamb to the slaughter…the Lord's good plan to crush him," the New Living Translation reads.

Get it? "…so disfigured one would scarcely know he was a person…"

That members of a V-Chip society should object to Gibson's depiction of the barbarity involved in Christ's scourging is no surprise. We are, after all, products of a culture that for centuries has cosmetically altered the horror of crucifixion by prominently displaying attractive crosses of gold and silver on chains about our necks or in our churches.

We may sing about the precious, precious blood of Jesus. But, please, we really don't want to see it.

From what I can tell, this is the mindset that seeks to fault Gibson for what he's done in The Passion. We want Gibson to conform to our convoluted notions of decency; we'd really rather not know that the Romans had death by scourging and crucifixion down to a calculated science.

It's an understandable reaction, for sure. But not a viable option for anyone who takes the words of Isaiah 52:14 at face value.

And then, of course, there are those who have made the anticipated, if somewhat wearying charge that The Passion of the Christ is anti-Semitic in content and tone.

The Jewish community has consistently taken a rigid stance against those who have sought to revise history in an effort to make it conform to their own nefarious prejudices. We expect as much from a people whose kin suffered through the unfathomable horror of the Holocaust and other demonic assaults, and applaud their concern.

Nevertheless, the caution I would raise is that the same voices that have been so outspoken in the past against the whitewashing of history need to be careful lest they succumb to the very thing they have pointed the finger at others for doing. Revising the facts of history to serve one's own agenda is unacceptable regardless of who is doing so.

While charges of anti-Semitism against this movie may be driven, in part, by membership in a pluralistic society that dictates we say only the best about all, the fact remains that the Bible maintains the Jewish religious leaders of Christ's day played a prominent role in His eventual demise.

The Passion of the Christ is faithful to the biblical record. Hence, any charges that his production is anti-Semitic implicitly point the finger, not so much at Gibson, but at Jewish writers like Matthew and John and the veracity of their accounts.

Which, as we've seen on both criticisms discussed here, appears to be the real issue at stake.