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The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is the best movie ever made about the event that changed the world forever. It is a Lenten tradition in my house to re-watch it each year. I can't help but wonder what the folks at the Oscars were thinking when they failed to even nominate James Caviezel who portrayed Jesus of Nazareth in the movie. If there was a better performance that year, I did not see it and I saw the movie that won for best male lead in 2004. No offense to Jamie Foxx but Caviezel's performance is the best I have seen by anyone ever. What the Oscar awards tell us its that the story of Ray Charles was more important than the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It brings me to the point about Hollywood and the movie business. Many of the heresies fought throughout the history of the Church are still around. They have merely assumed new forms, as the devil is known to do. I am speaking in this case of Gnosticism-Docetism which involves denying God came in the flesh. I think that the refusal of Hollywood to acknowledge Caviezel's performance was much more about the who than the what. Because Gibson and Caviezel had chosen to create a cinematic masterpiece about Jesus, the easiest thing to do was to ignore it and hope it went away. Of course, we all know that this movie did not go away and became, at the time, one of the top grossing movies of all time. It is still ranked in the top 15 all-time. Do you remember how entire congregations attended the movie as a community? In fact, it was staged at several mega-churches so that people could view it and then discuss it. These were not only Catholic Churches, which somehow left it to individuals to make the trip to the movie-plex, but Full Gospel, Evangelical, Non-denominational congregations as well as  small, mainline Protestant churches.Gnostic ideas found a Jewish variation in the mystical study of Kabbalah. The Kabbalists took many core Gnostic ideas and used them to dramatically reinterpret earlier Jewish sources according to this new influence.While Kabbalah shares several themes with Gnosticism, such as a multiplicity of heavenly levels and archetypes and the importance of mystical knowledge of these, it does not reflect the distinctive Gnostic belief that the material world and the Hebrew Bible are the work of an inferior and malevolent deity. Rather than describing Kabbalah as a form of Gnosticism, it would be more accurate to describe both Kabbalah and Gnosticism as members of a family of Neoplatonic/Neopythagorean Oriental mystical traditions.A heretical doctrine  of Christianity, Docetism is the belief that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was His crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality He was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die. This belief treats the sentence "the Word was made Flesh" (John 1:14) as merely figurative. Modern day Docetism has taken over Hollywood and infiltrated the movie industry. How can it be changed? Simply by using the tools that Docetists love most, money. We as Christians have shown that we will support a movie about Jesus. We need to continue to press Hollywood to make the types of movies we want. Along with the generic, fluffy "comedies" they are making, we need to demand that movies of substance be made about the themes we value: life, morals, values and Jesus. As we approach the holiest time of the year for the Church, let us also think about all of our choices. The things we "purchase" are sending a clear symbol to the Gnostics of today. Are you "voting" for God?

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