What did Jesus preach? Universal love. In the film's brief depiction of the Last Supper, Jesus COMMANDS his disciples that after his death they must love one another. Jesus teaches love not only of friends but even of enemies. To exemplify his commitment to this principle, he forgives his sadistic killers in the moments before his death.

Jesus taught peace, saying "He who lives by the sword will die by the sword." Jesus was so committed to nonviolence that he made the ultimate sacrifice so that we would finally stop sacrificing each other on the altar of differing beliefs and start loving each other as equals.

Jesus lived at a time before governments had anything like our First Amendment Had it existed then, he would not have been killed. The natural tendency for people is to consider those who don't accept our religious beliefs as enemies. Throughout human history, religious intolerance fueled much of humanity's inhumanity to man. Unfortunately, that tendency did not disappear when Jesus was sacrificed. Religious-based hatred is today putting the world in the greatest danger of destruction it has ever known.

We needn't be smug thinking that we are better than the religious fanatics who target innocent civilians in their attempt to overthrow modern hedonistic civilization. If we did not live in a country whose government guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, we ourselves could be among the hateful masses portrayed in The Passion. I can't tell you how many people have been offended and angry at me for expressing my views, despite the fact that I teach precisely what Jesus taught. If these angry, offended people had their way, I have no doubt that some of them would hurt me physically. One emailer actually wrote that he'd like to knock me out. And I'm sure many more would like to stop me from earning a living teaching people how to love one another.

Jesus taught that we must love our enemies. But we will never achieve this lofty goal when we don't even know how to love our friends. Just listen to how conservatives talk about liberals, and how liberals talk about conservatives. Listen to how nonbelievers talk about believers, and how believers talk about nonbelievers. And listen to how people belonging to different branches of the same faith talk about each other! People get so angry and treat each other like enemies for no greater sin than having different opinions, even though we are all citizens of the same country and are supposed to be friends.

Jesus taught that we must love each other regardless of what our particular beliefs are, and that the only thing that counts is that we live by the Golden Rule. People will always entertain a variety of beliefs, and these beliefs cannot all be equally true. It doesn't matter what we believe as long as we love each other and treat each other the way we would like to be treated. The only hope for world peace is that we love each other despite our particular beliefs.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are actually the embodiments of Jesus' teachings. We must not take these rights for granted. Religions do not automatically practice them. For the past two thousand years since Jesus, countless atrocities have been committed by people professing to be following his will by torturing and/or executing those who didn't accept him as God. We must first learn to value these First Amendment principles as the will of Jesus and practice them with our friends before we can have any chance of loving our enemies.

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The only reason it seems that Islam is at war with Christianity and Judaism is that the Islamic countries happen to be mostly dictatorships. When there were Jewish and Christian dictatorships, they were no less violent than today's Islamic dictatorships. Were the dictatorial Islamic countries of today to adopt freedom of religion and speech, they would be at peace with us. Certainly Mohammed would be pleased to see a world in which people of different beliefs were to love each other and live in harmony.

I will end this article about The Passion with recent news reports that the Islamic countries of the Middle East have made an exception to their ban on films about Jesus and have allowed the showing of The Passion. The ban exists because Islam denies that Jesus was crucified and that he died at that time. However, these countries are making an exception for The Passion because it so nicely serves their official policy of promoting hatred of Jews. I hope that The Passion will be so successful at teaching Jesus' message that it will foil these leaders' sinister intentions and instead have Islamic viewers leaving the theaters determined to love Jews. (By the way, contrary to what many people think, there is no reciprocal teaching of hatred towards Arabs or Muslims by Israel or the Jewish world. Israel staunchly guarantees freedom of religion, and you will find no official promotion of hatred towards members of other beliefs. Official promotion of religious hatred is striclty the realm of dictatorships.)