Since The Passion of the Christ is in theatres...part 8
[noticed at the Christianity section at about.com]

But there is a problem with this theology, with this piety, and with this movie, a fatal flaw at the very center of Mel Gibson's faith, as well as the popular forms of contemporary Christianity that this film reflects. As Mel Gibson's Passion so powerfully illustrates by negative example, the suffering of one human being, even if it happens to be Jesus of Nazareth, is not sufficient to make all things new. For however bloody and painful the death of Jesus was in fact--and this movie pulls out all the stops in making that suffering clear--ordinary people in the world today, two thousands years after the time of Christ continue to suffer and die just as he did and in the same old ways as victims of ruthless violence, and they do so in the same old places, such as the streets of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Baghdad, not to mention the awful, violent deaths occurring weekly, daily, hourly right here, much closer to home. Was the death of Jesus on the cross any more ghastly than the deaths not long ago of nearly 3000 human beings in the towering infernos of the World Trade Center, where, within a few painful minutes, these thousands were burned, asphyixiated, crushed, pulverized or buried alive? And as this bloody world turns, such deaths continue daily, hourly, minute by minute such that we are incapable of counting, let alone remembering them.

I happen to believe that the world will not be saved by the repetition of such violent stories, but rather by the saving acts of a loving God who reaches out to each and every one of us in ways that are as numberless as they are real. Today in contemporary America we are fixated upon violence both fictional and real, and I am afraid that Mel Gibson's film is a symptom of that fixation, rather than its cure. What the world needs now is the good that can come from God, and all of God's people acting in concert to repair this broken world, not a ritual of violent sacrifice from which some still believe the good may flow. In American today we need to listen to the words of the prophet of old, who put it quite plainly: "I desire steadfast love and not your bloody sacrifice." Hosea 6:6 -- translation mine.

---from Mel Gibon's Passion, reviewed at christianity.about.com