The Reverend Edward Pillar, minister of

Evesham Baptist Church, was one of the first people in Britain to see The Passion of the Christ at a special showing for church leaders in

February. Here he gives his personal views about Mel Gibson's controversial film.

THE Passion of the Christ combines grotesque scenes of brutality, gratuitous violence and cruelty with a message about love in a re-creation of a medieval Passion Play for the 21st Century.

Mel Gibson's film misses both the central thrust of Jesus' life and also obscures His message in scene upon harrowing scene of physical suffering.

Perhaps Gibson's own experience in violent movies has misguided him into thinking that brutality and cruelty would soften hard hearts and turn sinners into saints. Or perhaps his ultra-conservative faith, along with inspiration found in the visions of two medieval nuns, led to this gospel according to Mel Gibson.

The gospel according to Jesus, however, concerns the coming of a Kingdom where God will bring about justice and peace. Jesus comes as the King inviting the humble, weak and lowly to take up their places in the Kingdom.

He promises that His Kingdom will see the humbling of the proud and powerful and the raising up of the meek. What he inaugurates is a threat to the former and thus Jesus is crucified. These are the facts of the Gospels.

The Passion completely passes over this radical agenda preferring instead to draw attention to an uncomplicated message of love that is drowned out in the emotionally exhausting scene of the soldiers' relentless and sadistic flagellating of Jesus.

The Gospels only refer to the physical suffering of Jesus in a few stark sentences and later the Apostles explain that Jesus accepted suffering, death and separation from God so that his relationship with God might be offered to those who want, but are unable, to return to God. God is portrayed as a loving and merciful Father who welcomes the repentant home.

Gibson's gospel on the other hand is a shallow, two-dimensional memo that avoids subtleties and depth and instead supplies an androgynous devil and demonically morphing children who torment the guilt-ridden and suicidal Judas.

Gibson also pays scant attention to Christianity's most fundamental truth for a bewildering resurrection scene. The power and conviction of Christian faith is founded on the truth that Jesus actually and physically rose from the dead.

This conviction provides the momentum for followers of Jesus to announce that he is indeed the King of the whole earth who will ultimately be vindicated before a watching world.

But apparently not so in the Gospel according to Mel Gibson, who treats the resurrection as an incidental and unimportant postscript.

This uneven film may reflect Gibson's own journey but it sadly misses the opportunity to communicate the life-changing agenda of the greatest man who ever lived.

The film is showing at Worcester.