Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?

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Elphaba is my Christ figure.

I trust the person who got crushed by the machine more than the machine’s version of the story.

I do not need to believe that she lived. I read the book. She was crushed by the political machine and she died. The stage play covers it all up, and I would argue that is what happened to Jesus. He was crushed by the political machine in Rome, and his followers couldn’t bear it, so the Gospels are a response to grief.

That makes the Bible more true, more human…. not less. Resurrection does not need to happen at the cross. It needs to happen in the garden of Gethsemane, where you are arguing whether or not you are ready to take on the gargantuan task of living out your political beliefs. Jesus was not a fool. He knew that his hour was coming, but I do not believe that it was a divine plan. I believe that like Martin Luther King, Jr. after him, he had a sense of where the crowd was going and internalized that he was doing something politically dangerous that could get him killed.

The historical Jesus is dead, but his ideas are very much alive. The political machinery that Donald Trump is presenting is very much like The Wizard in nature- “nothing to see here” and “everything is fabulous” while the world is clearly burning. In this day and age, Jesus is:

• Macklemore
• Ms. Rachel
• Dolly Parton
• Jimmy Carter

People who stand up for the right things even when it’s hard. 

Dolly comes from a very conservative Evangelical area of the country. It did not stop her from responding during the AIDS crisis, while AIDS never escaped the president’s lips (it’s true. Reagan never even said “AIDS” publicly during his presidency and between 1981 and 1989, more than 89,000 Americans died of AIDS.).

The same can be said of Jimmy Carter, who used his faith to be president for all the people, not just the ones he liked. God appears in the people you like the least, and his political opponents were fierce in standing up for everything he hated- the 1980s ushered in individualism and cruelty because of it. The social safety net started to crumble and we as a nation decided not to care.

Now we are reaping the benefits.

None of the political machinery that Elphaba and Jesus fought against is gone.

It’s all hidden in the fairy tale we made up.