It was at a holiday barbecue when the subject of Mel Gibson‘s latest alleged rant came up. This time, as you probably know by now, the movie star/director is said to have been caught on tape delivering a vile sexist and racist tirade threatening violence against Oksana Grigorieva, the former girlfriend with whom he has a child.

And, of course, it’s been just about four years since the director of The Passion of the Christ delivered his infamous anti-Semitic tirade while being picked up on a DUI.    

Gibson is well-known as a more conservative than the Pope Catholic and his most recent outburst was cited as evidence that religious conservatives are often hypocrites and just plain nasty characters.

That’s true enough — and not a point I would really dispute.

Certainly Mel Gibson’s ugly utterances aren’t doing people of faith (any faith) any favors as they do provide ammunition to the argument that, far from bringing peace and enlightenment to the world, religious belief often does quite the opposite. Let’s be honest. It’s true, isn’t it?

But it’s also not the whole story. There are certainly, at least in my experience, countless examples of people of faith who really do live up to the ideals that their respective religions espouse.

When I produced a show called Seize the Day for SiriusXM’s Catholic Channel, we did a daily segment called Everyday Heroes. The segment was actually the idea of the show’s host Gus Lloyd but I got into it — even though it required finding no fewer than five real-life heroes per week to feature.  But, trooper that I am, I did it.

More often than not those heroes (who either sacrificed on behalf of a cause or were of the saved-someone-from-an-oncoming-train variety) were people of faith (and not always Catholic). I often found myself very moved by their dedication to serving God and others and to simply being good. Very rarely (actually never that I can recall at this moment) did I sense hypocrisy. Producing the segments left me more convinced than ever that true faith (based on love not legalistic dogma) really is a positive force in the world.

It’s also worth noting that, while Gibson’s comments (those proven and alleged) do reveal a very dark side to an obviously tortured man, he’s also apparently an alcoholic whose father is reportedly a right-wing holocaust denier.  Either one of those factors could scramble a person’s brain. Taken together, that’s a volatile combination.

While there’s absolutely no defending the words attributed to him, I have not walked a mile in Gibson’s shoes.  In some respects I’d almost compare him to an al-Qaeda terrorist who was fed a diet of hate as a child and still believes it as an adult or a physical child abuser (as opposed to emotional one) who himself was abused as a child. None of their actions are to be tolerated and, while some people do manage to break the cycle and transcend negative childhoods, not all do. It’s our job to resist them, refute them and/or bring them to earthly justice — not to condemn them.

In Gibson’s particular case, he’s also a philanthropist who, according to the Foundation Center/Youth in Philanthropy has donated several millions of dollars to hospitals and organizations caring for needy children here and around the world. So it seems somewhere within a very flawed person is also a person who wants to good. I point it out because, at it time when it’s very easy to take shots at the guy (something like shooting fish in a barrel), it’s worth noting that he too is a human being and a work in progress.

I for one do pray that he finds his way away from his mind’s darkest recesses and maybe even makes a movie about that journey that promotes understanding. He is a great film maker — who somehow even managed to make Apocalypto, his 2006 film in which the characters spoke in an ancient Mayan dialect, captivating. It would be great if he could use that talent as a means to help heal himself and society in general.

In the end, understanding and forgiveness will set us all free.