David Brooks had a pretty fantastic

column today, saying that

the squishy, therapeutic religion exemplified by Mitch Albom’s “The Five

People You Meet in Heaven” is more of a danger to American society than the

muscular Christianity on display in Mel Gibson’s movie. Brooks, who is

Jewish, does not defend Gibson’s film, but he does say that the narcissism

and spiritual sloth that characterizes popular religion in America today

corrodes public virtue. I wanted to shout, “Hallelujah!” when I finished

that column. I was raised Methodist, and have passed through the Southern

Baptist church and the Episcopal Church before I finally ended up in the

Roman Catholic church 11

years ago. With the possible exception of the Southern Baptist church, I don’t

recall ever having heard any kind of Christianity preached that wasn’t

essentially a spiritualized gloss on Dr. Phil-ism. The happy exceptions are so rare

I’d sooner expect to find rashers of bacon in the Riyadh IHOP than hear

something substantive and challenging.

For me, “The Passion of the Christ” acted as a head-clearer from all the

bourgeois kultursmog one gets in church these days, where one is challenged

to do little more than be nice to others and accept that God affirms us in

our Okayness. When I went to mass on Ash Wednesday, I was still reeling from

the searing grandeur of the film, and thinking very much about my own sins,

and the role I played in Christ’s suffering. The priest began his homily by

saying, “I was going to preach a fire-and-brimstone homily, but that’s not

my style.” This was supposed to be a joke, as his homilies all sound as

intelligent and modulated as an extended NPR commentary, minus the edge (an

Ira Glass monologue is “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God” by

comparison). And you know, I wanted to scream. I’m so sick of this

Jesus-is-our-Buddy stuff. Our Lord in Dockers. Who needs it, ya know?