Mel Gibson had one the other night. Stopped by authorities with a BAL of 0.12, he became belligerent and started shouting anti-Semitic and sexist insults at the LA County Sheriff's deputies. Of course, this is splashed all over the headlines; everyone, and I mean, everyone, is weighing in, most of whom just knew in their hearts that this professed Christian, just like all the others who have this too-good-to-be-true belief in God and his benevolence, is at heart, a hypocrite!

Aha! This confirms our suspicions to the tee! Mel Gibson's avowed faith, his public statements of belief, his Passion of the Christ, are all just foils - decoys - meant to distract us from his true self: a guy just like us, who simply doesn't have the decency to admit that he's a guy just like us. The emperor's new clothes have come off! He's a preachy fraud! Right?

Wrong. Mel's bad (shall I say, catastrophically embarassing and alienating) night is merely an example writ large of what resides in all of our hearts: thoughts too foul to admit, anger seething and boiling, wretched arrogance, pitiful susceptibility to drink and wantonness. Mel had the grace (upon sobering up) to do what most of us would not: publicly eat crow.

The ability to do that comes from a recognition that I am loved by an impossibly mighty and scandalously forgiving God, who sent his Son to take all that nastiness of mine and Mel's upon Himself, and hang on a tree and die because of it.

Perhaps the world will never really get Christians. They'll probably always see us fall and think "Ha. I knew it. Couldn't last." But they'll be missing this: That's not a reason to turn away from Christ. That's why I turn to Christ.