Mel Gibson has very successfully managed to capitalise on, not just a sensitive religious issue, but a humanitarian one as well. For anyone surprised (or appalled) by my comment that The Passion of Christ is not a religious movie, it is actually based on my firm personal conviction that Christianity is not about the last 24 hours of the Christ's life.

The miracle of faith, for me, begins with His conception and goes beyond His crucifixion. As such, I despise the way in which the Gospel and the last day of Jesus Christ were manipulated to fill the coffers of another.

To praise or condemn Gibson for his work is to give him due credit where perhaps none is due. However, we do just that by discussing the rights and wrongs of such a movie, giving it the publicity that, in my opinion, it certainly does not deserve.

Faith is personal and should remain so. Dragging it through the pages of movie reviews is not the way one should analyse one's faith. It is also not a forum for others to criticise, question or comment upon a person's personal beliefs.

I have demonstrated my stand on this by removing Christ from the possibility of such a discussion. I am totally against Gibson's treatment of the last day of Christ and I refuse to credit his movie by allowing a discussion on the divinity of Christ into such a public arena.

Nevertheless, if ever there was a time to examine our humanity, it is now. I stand by my assertion that as a race (of humans), we have not evolved much from the times of Christ; we are still as bigoted, narrow-minded, selfish and aggressive as the persecutors depicted in Gibson's movie.

It makes no difference whether they are Romans, Jews or Gentiles. These negative qualities are in all of us and do not belong exclusively to any race or creed. Or are we saying that as Malaysians did not play a part in the movie, they have been spared such despicable qualities?

We need to look beyond the shallow depictions of the movie. Nitpicking on the imagery of a movie is not the way forward to make ourselves better human beings. Finger-pointing at who should be responsible for the suffering of Christ - based on a controversial movie - will not get us anywhere.

A time for quiet reflection is required. Do we continue to argue, to hate, to wage war in the name of religion or do we learn from the mistakes of the past?

We all have our private demons to fight and the weapon should be faith and not fist. This is the lesson I wish to take from the movie - nothing else. I credit it with no more.

We all have different ways of looking at Gibson's movie; various interpretations that will keep us discussing it for another 2,000 years. We continue to argue over whose opinion is right and who should be allowed to watch it.

But while we busy fighting it out, Gibson is happily raking it in. And where does that leave us? With nothing but our conscience.