Thank God for the Da Vinci Code?

I’ve just watched the Da Vinci code last night. Well, it’s not as boring as other people have suggested it to be. It was a thriller, no doubt, with all its plot twists. It’s just too bad that I already knew what was coming, thanks to all the hype surrounding the movie, not to mention the flyers spreading all over. And it seems that almost every Christian blog is talking about it, putting links to articles about it, etc… and they are all full of spoilers!! It seems that the Christians are taking this work of fiction too seriously, even more than our non-Christian counterparts! So here I am, continuing with the trend… haha!

There are already more than enough articles claiming to rebut the theories put forth by Dan Brown about Jesus. I’ll be sick if I look at another one. Yes, yes, there are a lot of theological and historical errors in the story. But is there any truth in the Da Vinci code? Or, to reframe the question, does Dan Brown have a point?

Has the Church focused so much on the divinity of Jesus that we have forgotten how human He was? Do we need to allow Jesus to be the man that He was 2000 years ago? And there is no better place to see Jesus in all his humanness in the four canonical gospels. We don’t need to go to the Gnostic gospels (they don’t really portray Jesus as a human being anyway, since according to Gnostic beliefs, Jesus never had a physical body!).

And, has the Church forgotten its mission? Christianity began as a subversive and radical movement against the unjust powers of the first century, namely the Temple hierarchy, and the Emperor cult of Rome. No wonder they were mostly tortured or killed. Now it seems that Christianity is colluding with those powers and systems that Jesus openly criticized. Instead, the Church in certain parts of the world is turning against those people Jesus would have sought to protect – the sinners, the poor and the marginalized. The role has been reversed. No wonder people are so fed up with the Christians! No wonder they don’t like the version of Jesus that the Church seems to portray to the world. No wonder people believe that the Church is a power-crazy institution that will do anything to protect its power. Does the Church need to reevaluate what it stands for, and learn again as little children what it means to follow Jesus?

Thanks to the Da Vinci code, my colleagues are all talking about religion. They’re asking me more questions than ever before about Jesus. Every time we sit down for lunch, the topic is sure to enter the conversation. So I made it a point to watch the show with them. I guess the book and the movie are a blessing in disguise. No doubt it hurts to hear what the movie says about our Lord and Christianity. But we can be assured that the shame, humiliation and pain of Friday will ultimately lead to victory, joy and glory on Sunday…

On another note, the Church has gone to great lengths to teach its adherents how to differentiate between fact and fiction in the Da Vinci Code. We are reminded again and again that this is a work of fiction. Now, why doesn’t the Church do the same thing with another work of fiction that is equally as damaging and dangerous, if not even more so because many Christians actually believe it to be true? I’m talking about the ‘Left Behind’ series, which is as much fiction with as much theological errors as the Da Vinci Code is and has. Why aren’t there as many rebuttals and seminars about it?