Knife Fight in Caracas!
You know who needs an introduction to the concept of "regime change"? Hugo Chavez, president/dictator of Venezuela, that Castro-coddling blankety-blank so-and-so. The man has instructed the armed forces to ignore Venezuela's Supreme Court whenever they rule any of his policies unconstitutional and because that hasn't silenced all oppostion, he's trying to pack the court! Hugo, if you don't shape up you could find yourself on the wrong end of the most irresistable foreign policy instrument the world has ever seen, a little thing I like to call the Donald Rumsfeld War Machine.

The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Mountain of Love and I saw The Passion of the Christ yesterday. Holy kajiggers, that was an amazingly powerful experience. I was fortunate enough to be raised as a Roman Catholic; so, I have seen Passion plays all my life. My parish, Holy Redeemer, had a long-standing tradition of a mimed Passion play put on by the high school youth group, including one year, oddly enough, my sister. Christ, Pilate, the Romans, the Jews, Barrabas, they all worn black clothing and white face paint. A series of students in their Sunday best stood at the pulpit and read from the Scriptures, narrating the story. It was always an intense experience, even in my relatively agnostic teenaged years. All day yesterday, I felt unnerved, as if I'd done something wrong. Of course, since Christ died for the sins of the whole world, past, present, and future, I had. Jim Caviezel was crucified for my sins.

However moving the film was, it simply reinforced what I've been saying all along: grateful though I am for Christ's sacrifice, it is The Iliad not the Passion that is the greatest story ever told. The Passion is about Christ, a divine man, God made flesh, who lived most of His life as Jesus of Nazareth, a simple carpenter, then was put to death for threatening the power of the temple priests in Roman-occupied Judea. Yes, it includes an all-star cast - Mary, Mary Magdalene, Peter (later, the first pope), Pontius Pilate, Judas Iscariot, the Devil (wow, this is better than The Towering Inferno) - but it is all about Christ*. He is put to death for no good reason, which is a grave injustice, but it's exactly what He and His Father wanted - needed - to happen in order to save all of our undeserving souls. It is all about Christ, who was and is God.

The Iliad, by contrast, is about us. It is a story about people being selfish, noble, short-sighted, prophetic, lustful, generous, ruthless, deceitful, arrogant, intelligent; in a word, human. The Trojan War was sparked by the gods, but it was fought for the reasons of men. We do not live in a culture where Paris and Helen's eloping would launch a thousand ships, but we certainly understand Menelaus's desire both for revenge and to have his queen back. We understand why Hector would fight to defend his younger brother's mistake. We understand the stubborn pride that caused Achilles to sit in his tent, and why Patrocles's death brought him out. The Passion is about God; The Iliad is about us, those made in His image. I'm a big fan of God (and by that I mean a humble servent, O wrathful Lord), but to my way of thinking, the greatest story ever told has to be a story about us, about the nobility and cruelty that are both present in all our hearts.

*You may notice that I almost always refer to the Son of God as Christ, a title, rather than as Jesus, His name. Evangelicals ask, "Do you have a healthy relationship with Jesus as your personal lord and savior?" I would have to answer no. My personal lord and savior? Sounds a little presumptuous to me. Personal? No, not personal, Christ scares the hell out of me. He could heal lepers with a touch! He died! He came back to life! He has holes in His hands, sides, and feet! He ascended bodily into Heaven! Bodily! Most ominously, the Nicene Creed, which I have recited since youth, clearly states that "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Oh, crap, He's coming back! Christ is God, and at the same time a man. All the power of God, the being who created the universe with a word, contained in a short (well, he'd probably be short from my 21st centry perspective) Jewish man from the backwaters of Galilee. I'm sorry, but being close to that much power scares me. Jesus isn't one of my idiot friends, I wouldn't want to joke around with Him. Hanging out with Him would depress me to no end, since I'd certainly make a jackass out of myself; He died for my sins, asking in return only that I believe in Him and try to love my neighbors as He loves me, and in His presence I know that all I'd be able to think about is how very very far short of His example I have fallen. Jesus loves me unconditionally, but I would be embarrassed in His company and feel unworthy of His sacrifice. I know that I'd be too ashamed to look Him in the eye. So, I prefer to refer to Him as the Christ, the omnipotent Son of God, not as Jesus, the adopted son of a carpenter. That is a more comfortable frame of reference for me.

I'm Going to Hell For This
Disturbingly, when not being overdubbed with a male voice, Satan is pretty hot.