One of the things that’s fun about being part of a church body is that for some reason there tends to be a propensity for church plays around Christmas.  I don’t blame the Baptists, but I think that somewhere along the line, they got really good at bigger and bigger productions.  If Steven Spielberg wasn’t a Jew, he’d be a Baptist pastor of drama or some such thing.  I’m not here to talk about Baptists or Jews, but tonight I got to play the brief part of Herod.  I was asked to be Herod, the nasty ruler of the Jewish part of Rome who ordered lots of dead infants and children and generally was not a good guy.

It turns out that I’m too jovial and happy.  Herod was probably selfish, egotistical, and much more middle-eastern.  I’m probably selfish (but less so), egotistical (but less so), and I’m rather white and northern European.  Between those similarities and differences I can tell you that I pretty much did NOT embody the persona of Herod.  I could not pull off mean and angry.  Not a bit.  I was too much of a grinner [I was told].  I wasn’t even trying to grin, thinking about grinning, or even aware that I was grinning.  But apparently I grinned my face off.  Apparently the order to destroy all the males two and under was not convincing despite my best effort.

I’m totally OK with this.  I’m glad I failed at being nasty.  I will sleep well tonight knowing that I stink at being wicked and evil in an overt way.  Of course that means I’m probably just a quieter, more devious sort of bad guy, but we knew that already, too.  Ever since elementary school I was good at scheming bad things for others to do.  I rarely got in trouble because its hard to get caught when someone else is doing the dirty work.  I don’t blame the Baptists for this either.  Be stinky at being little Herods, its probably better for you anyway.