Wanna be pissed?

If you're among the masses upset over The Da Vinci Code, I have a couple of recommendations for you.

First, breath. Calm down. It's a movie. And from what I've read, not a very good one. It won't destroy Christianity. If anything, it's giving the Church publicity and an opportunity to discuss its faith.

Second, read Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. If you're so upset about Dan Brown questioning the veracity of the Church, check out what Christopher Moore has to say about J.C. himself.

The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the
central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. Just
the tail end and the hind legs were visible on the outside; the head and
forelegs were halfway down the hatch. He was six, like me, and his beard
had not come in fully, so he didn't look much like the pictures you've seen of
him. His eyes were like dark honey, and they smiled at me out of a mop of
blue-black curls that framed his face. There was a light older than Moses
in those eyes.

"Unclean! Unclean!" I screamed, pointing at the boy so my mother would see that I knew the Law, but she ignored me, as did all the other mothers who were filling their jars at the well.

The boy took the lizard from his mouth and handed it to his younger brother, who sat beside him in the sand. The younger boy played with the lizard for a while, teasing it until it reared its little head as if to bite, then he picked up a rock and smashed the creature's head. Bewildered, he pused the dead lizard around in the sand, and once assured that it wasn't going anywhere on its own, he picked it up and handed it back to his older brother.

Into his mouth went the lizard, and before I could accuse, out it came again, squirming alive and ready to bite once again. He handed it back to his younger brother who smote it mightly with the rock, starting the whole process again.

I watched the lizard die three more times before I said, "I want to do that too."

The Savior removed the lizard from his mouth and said, "Which part?"

By the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It's the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the "H" in Jesus H. Christ stood for. It's one of the things I should have asked him.