I am getting to the point where I sneeze and cough every time I hear "Da Vinci"... allergies begin with overexposure, I am told.
Still, this needs to be said: the only upsetting thing about Dan Brown's beach-reading page-turner is that it is upsetting anyone. False teaching? Well, maybe. More like nonsense to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the New Testament and early Christianity. But nonsense is a staple of fiction--believable enough to be interesting, but not believable enough to be unsettling. And to those who want to believe the Church is evil, well, this proves it, huh? But only to those predisposed.
But isn't Dan Brown in a great position? He can fire-off whatever half-baked criticisms he has and if anyone challenges him he says, "Hey, it's a novel!" Nice.
Oh, and I understand he read thirty-nine books while researching. THIRTY-NINE... why, that hardly makes a good freshman theme, much less a scholarly credential.
I do think it interesting the similarity between The Da Vinci Code and The Left Behind Series: that there are secrets which a few know, but only a few, lest someone reveal them to you. That, my friends, is classic Gnosticism (see the most The Christian Century for more on this withering insight).
2 comments:
Good thoughts, here, Tom. I finally started looking deeper than DaVinci, to all those other "non fiction" books out there trying to discredit the Bible, and it got me thinking in quite a few different directions. I asked a few questions at the end of my blog post of May 26... feel free to answer any of them!
Always amazes me how people read something (newspaper, book, etc) and immediately take it to be truth. I read the DaVinci Code ... fun book ... I love puzzles ... but I don't study it any more than I study works by Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy. All fiction has elements of truth ... much of the technology described by Tom Clancy is real ... but it doesn't make the story real.
For recent pictures of us all, go to www.flickr.com and search for zjandosmom in contacts.
Looking at summer dates for a christening, and, of course, require you to officiate. We'll make it worth your while ... Einstein's maybe [grin].
Trust all are well ... where's Bethany these days? and what's Jo up to? I'll ring in the next week to catch up.
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