Good Things About The Da Vinci Code Fad
By now perhaps you have heard about the extremely popular novel, The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown. I was toying around with the idea of doing this message on Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey colt. I was going to title that message, “the Da Vinci Colt.” But I guess, I thought I better do it after Easter, closer to the movie’s opening day in May. Published in 2003, this mystery-thriller, with apparently 40 million in print (in 44 languages) and with 6 million more in paperback since March 28 of this year, is King-Kong sized huge! The movie trailers are already on TV, and it looks like it’ll be big box-office attraction. I am sure many of you, along with your friends will be watching or talking about this. I was golfing on Monday and folks are talking about it. It seems to be gaining a good following throughout the world. Why make a deal out of this fad? Mainly because it has gained such world-wide exposure and it is influencing pop culture of our day. If we are to reach this world with the good news of Jesus, we need to be ready to give a reason for the hope we say we have and do it in gentleness without looking ignorant of what they have been exposed to (1 Peter 3:15-16). If the numbers are correct in a recent poll (Apr. 2006) conducted by Ipsos Reid, CanWest News, already one in 5 Canadians believe in Dan Brown’s alternate version of history. And if we are ignorant of this, we will miss a great chance for Christians to build a bridge of understanding with people who seek to know the real story of Jesus and the reason for the hope we have in Him. I completed reading this novel and I believe there are really good things that we Christians got to grab a hold of with this fad.
Summary of the Plot
Tell u the truth, I am not a novel reading type. Just give me the movie version, or the Coles notes version, that’ll do! But I read it, all for the sake of doing research. First few chapters were good but it kinda bogs down in the middle for me as it becomes a little preachy and it sure had a rather lousy ending. My reaction to the ending of the book was – “What the… that’s it??” On entertainment value I’ll give 3 stars out of five. My wife read it and says she has read better mysteries and found it laughable especially when Mickey Mouse and Disney (p.282) made an appearance in the novel. What is the novel about? Basically it is about chasing after the Holy Grail. So we get an adventure, sort like Indiana Jones except that Indy is now called Robert Langdon, also a university professor, like Dr. Jones, blazing around Europe chasing after clues in search of the holy grail. Here is a good summary of the book by James Emery White (April 24, 2006 www.christianitytoday.com).
It starts off with the murder of a curator at the Louvre in Paris, leads to a trail of clues found in the work of Leonardo DaVinci, and the discovery of a centuries-old secret society. It’s a page-turner. But that’s not what has grabbed our attention. It’s that the clues of Leonardo’s work and the mission of the secret society (the priory of Sion) revolve around the Holy Grail.
This Holy Grail is not put forward as what we traditionally think of as the Holy Grail, the chalice that Jesus used during the Last Supper. The novel identifies the Holy Grail as the bloodline of Jesus and suggests that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and the mother of his child... After the crucifixion, she fled with their child to the south of France where they established the Merovingian line of European royalty, which then became the basis of a secret society to preserve that bloodline and to protect the secret until it was time to make it known to the wider world.
Along the way, author Dan Brown also suggests the church (at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD) invented (the bible as we know it and) the deity of Jesus, and it’s all been covered up primarily by a secretive Catholic group known as Opus Dei.
But let’s read from the Bible as we get into today’s message…
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. – John 1:1-3 (NIV)
Scholars date John to around 90 AD. No doubt on that! There is also no doubt where John is going with his opening statement about his gospel. He assumes that Jesus is divine. It was the NOT the church that invented Jesus as God in 325. So who wrote that Jesus is God first, the council at Nicea in 325 or John? John purposefully brought in the OT imagery of the creation account in Genesis where it states “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” to connect Jesus with creation. In the beginning Jesus was there, He is God, and there really is nothing to debate here. If you like, John coded His message like this - the Word, which spoke, the world into being is actually the code-word for Jesus. Conclusion: if you wanna decode what God is really like, all you need to do is to find out what Jesus is like, and you’ll get the picture. Don’t need Da Vinci or some later art-piece to tell you that. John and the other apostles told us this with even if it meant possible death and suffering for them. To pass this message on, was a dangerous thing but they did it. Why? Because if Jesus is God and He rose from the dead and forgave them their sins, then they have eternal life. It is a message worth giving their lives for.They have no intention to suppress the truth about the real Jesus. They risked their lives to tell it and so Jon writes the radical message of Jesus down telling us it was Jesus who made all things! Just in case you still can’t quite get the picture, John tells us that this Word who is God became flesh, if you jump down to v.14
14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,[d] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So this is John’s ingenious short, to the point, version of the Christmas story. The Word which was from the beginning, who is God, has now in Jesus become a human being. John says “We have seen his glory…” to communicate that they were not just recording what others say, but were recording eye-popping eyewitness accounts. They were not sitting somewhere theorizing, conspiring how to get rid of Mary as the wife of Jesus. They were not high smoking some weed, dreaming things up. They were not sipping on Starbucks and wondering if Jesus is divine or not, they saw His glory, the miracles, they experienced Jesus and He was in the flesh and was it ever powerful and life-transforming. They saw Jesus die on the cross, feared for their future and got their hope restored when Jesus was resurrected. They felt and heard, and saw, God in the flesh speaking to them. It was not a mere flash of insight in which they experienced God in a mystical ritual, he made his dwelling among us, he lived here and ate with him and wanted to share this news about Jesus. And if Jesus ever got married, would you not think that John would have said so. The NT record tells of other brothers and sisters and father and mother but leave out the wife?? MAKES NO SENSE! The Da Vinci Code would want you to believe that. But I am glad for the book, why?
The first good thing about the D Code fad is that Jesus gets free airtime. BTW, do you know how much it costs to make a Hollywood movie with Tom Hanks as the star attraction? I am glad someone else is paying the bills. Free-airtime, can’t beat that! Any publicity is good publicity! Let’s pray that this fad will get people thinking more about Jesus and just plain curious about the real story of the Christ! I think they should have casted the other Tom, Tom Cruise for that show. Anyhow, this fad just shows us that the world is still quite fascinated with Jesus. Good thing talking about Jesus is cool now! We get the awesome chance to share the real story of Jesus, if folks were to get curious about Him, dig into the Gospel story through such widespread free publicity. I hope that Christians are prepared to give an answer for the hope that they have.
I am aware that some of you may get upset if I would say negative things about the book because it’s your favorite book. I once was attacked quite viciously by a church going person after I made passing remark about Harry Potter in a sermon several years ago. It’s like reverse blasphemy. I had just offended the Harry Potter god! I was never forgiven for offending Harry! It seems odd that this guy would defend Harry Potter with passion but would not attend church with the same care and passion.
I like to believe that we as Christians can engage our culture and use it as a launching point for reaching lost people who matter to God. Our Lord Jesus did not shy away from controversy in culture. For instance, his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well who had 5 husbands, as recorded in John 4, shows us His concern is to reach lost people. Talk to a woman that’s loose, and not of the same race, that’s not cool thing to do for a conservative upright Jewish guy in those days. Jews and Samaritans are mortal enemies and no mixing is allowed! But he engaged her in a spiritual conversation. He talked about what’s on the agenda of most people there in a dry desert like land – water and how thirst is quenched. In doing so, Jesus brought her to faith in Him. She knew Jesus’ forgiveness and acceptance of her because he bothered to converse in ways that were understandable to her. If we are to tell this world about the good news of Jesus Christ, we must at least be aware of some of the hang-ups others may have, especially with a bestseller book such as the Da Vinci Code which says that the divinity of Jesus is made up myth concocted by a church council in 325. So let’s seize this chance to bring up the real Jesus with the D Code fad with this free airtime given by pop culture today.
“Will The Da Vinci Code drive millions away from the historic Christian faith?” asks Phil Cooke, a media expert. “Doubtful,” he says. “The Barna Research Group reported that less than one-tenth of 1% of the people who watched ‘The Passion of the Christ’ actually accepted Christ as a result of viewing the film. The gay population won’t spike because of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ and I doubt ‘The Da Vinci Code’ will create a nation of agnostics. What it will do is give us one of the greatest platforms we’ve had in a long time for sharing our faith.” (Dr. Phil Cooke – media expert- in a press release on Apr. 11, 2006 on www.wdcmedia.com)
Let’s be ready to share the faith, people of the Lord!
The second good thing about the D Code Fad is that it forces Christians to be critical.
So the book is about a conspiracy of the Vatican to shield the world from the truth. As claimed by one of the characters in the novel in p.255 “…almost everything our fathers taught about Christ is false.” Is that true? How do you know if the teachings of the church is right on? Do your homework. I am not scared by this. Why? Cause I was forced to defend the truth of Jesus way back in my first year university experience. I wrote a paper defending the historical accuracy of Jesus. Got a B+. So I know it is true, do you? Or will you let Mr. Dan Brown be the chief source of information. Just in case you go there for your info, please note the fineprint printed right at the front of the book, right after the title page, just before the acknowledgments, -
“THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”
So the internal evidence of the book argues against taking the claims of the novel too seriously. The novel itself claims that it is a work of fiction. The Bible claims itself to be truthful, the D Code says “This book is a work of fiction”! This is further substantiated by David van Biema, writing in the April 24, 2006 issue of Time magazine in an article called “The Ways of the Opus Dei”, states that the villain in the novel, i.e. the Opus Dei Catholic organization is “NOT the villain that the Da Vinci Code sets it up to be.” In order words, Time is saying “come on, people, don’t swallow everything that Dan Brown is saying, think… do your research.” Christian scholar W. Ward Gasque, in May 2004 stated this to BC Christian News: "You wouldn’t think that people would be believing this, because it’s a work of fiction. But it’s being assumed to be a work of history and historical research." Whoa! I trust that if we just read the fineprint, nobody would be silly enough to say, yup, Brown’s revisionist history is real. Who was there when the apostle John in around 90AD described Jesus as God, not just a man?
The third good thing about the D Code fad is that it reaffirms the story of Jesus. There are people who still believe that Elvis is not dead. That the Nazis did not murder millions of Jews in WW2. They can actually sing in American Idol. There are those who still can’t believe why the Canucks did not make the playoffs this year with such a talented line-up and that Marc Crawford did not get fired as the coach of the team. We live in a world where fiction is now considered fact and they have no desire to face reality. The Bible tells us in 2 Peter 1
12So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. 13I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, 14because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. 15And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things. 16We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
The internal evidence of the Bible says that you can trust the documents of the Bible, unlike the D Code where it is clear it says it is a work of fiction. Peter writes that he was right there and he seeks to write down what he actually experienced and saw about Jesus. This is confirmed by other witnesses and other historians.
Furthermore, we can confidently say it because of the novel’s opening on p.1 which goes like this in bold letters, “FACT: the Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099, is a real organization.” Dig a little deeper, you will find that this is not in fact, a fact. It is a hoax!! Totally fraudulent! The real organization was actually founded in 1956 by a French conman, Pierre Plantard in order to make him look as if he is of royal blood. Documents that support Dan Brown’s book all originated from this one source who planted fake documents in a library in Paris. Won’t have time to the details. Want details just go look up wikipedia.org and search for the organization. Enough to know that the book falls apart as fact when it is based on bogus documents. Fact - 1099 or 1956? Read the novel for fun, and don’t let it throw you off the real truth revealed from the bible that God became flesh. For fun, look a little closer you will see “the Priory of Sion” is an anagram of “Fine Poor History.” And look at the “Opus Dei” see anagram of “So I dupe”.
Tucked away in the “Arts and Life” section (p.F8) Van Sun Sat. April 15, 2006 Richard Ostling writes an Associated Press article entitled “Da Vinci Code rides popularity of conspiracy theories” and it says this, “So here they are – the supposed secrets nobody wants you to know, least of all the Christian church… Can this all be true? No, say virtually all serious historians who deal with the first century. But that doesn’t matter in the world of publishing.”
ABC News correspondent Elizabeth Vargas worked on an ABC NEWS special, “Jesus, Mary and DaVinci,” in the fall of 2003. Apparently, it was reported by MSNBC.com that the show “unravels like a mystery perpetuated by secondhand gossip.” That is, there is no proof, “secondhand gossip” just unsubstantiated statements which anyone can make up. MSNBC says this “… ABC FOUND NO PROOF that Jesus had a wife, but couldn’t completely discount it, either.” Meaning, they want to hold out the possibility that Jesus had a wife, even if the evidence is not there.
So why is D Code so believable for some though it is based on little or no evidence and obviously fraudulent documents and organizations? Lynn Garrett, religion editor of Publishers Weekly for the past decade, the explanation is simple: "Conspiracy theories have tremendous appeal for Americans." In particular, Brown’s novel feeds into "a willingness on peoples’ part to believe the worst about Christianity generally and the Roman Catholic Church in particular." She sees it as the religious equivalent of the many theories about President Kennedy’s assassination.
Brown writes (p.251) “Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen.” Whether Brown wants to acknowledge it or not, the fact that he chose to write an alternative history shows of Jesus shows that he believes in the power of Christ and how he has made a mark in this world. Which is exactly what John says God did - the word became flesh and He dwelt among us and that He loves us so much that he showed Himself to us for all time. The life of Christ has made a mark, so what will you do with it.
And it is through the historical figure, Jesus, that we can get a true picture of God. Jesus claims this:
Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ’Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? …11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves (John 14:9-11 NIV)
God did not leave some mysterious code for us to figure out what He is all about. He did not want us spend time hunting for clues, figuring puzzles or formulas or anagrams, to seek after some mysterious truth that’s been guarded by those in the know… There is no secret knowledge, no holy grail to get to God. God decided to make Himself known easily through His flesh and blood Son, Jesus. That is what John sought to do as he tells us the story of Jesus in the Gospel. Biblical scholars dated the book of John around 90 AD. Who would you rather believe as the reliable source regarding the story of Jesus? Plantard? Brown? Or John, who was there when Jesus walked the earth? Let’s get serious about real church history. I am glad in a recent poll, people were asked about this statement - “I believe that through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided the way for the forgiveness of my sins”. Canada 62% agreed while in USA 76% agreed. “I have committed my life to Christ and consider myself to be a converted Christian.” Canada 41% and USA 60%%.
The fourth good thing about the D Code fad is that it shows us the need to embrace of the power of story.
The D Code fad reminds me that Exciting stories and good movies communicate. The D Code shows how good story-telling will get people’s attention. Good entertaining engaging stories will always have an audience. Great art such as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, it seems, continues to fascinate, and people seem inspired by them. And if we are to spread the Gospel we must not miss the fact that Jesus Himself did that in the many parables He told, painting pictures of life using birds of the air, rock, sand, seed, pearls to communicate about a God who invites people to a Kingdom of love. The story he told of the prodigal son who blew it all but found grace, blows me away still today. That He told it to a bunch of know-it all Pharisees to tell them, don’t u get it, God is not after the good people who follows all the rules, God is after lost people, they matter to Him because they are so lost and God’s ready to give them a chance to get the party in heaven, if they would repent and believe in Christ. Let us be aware of the presence of images and symbols in our culture and put them to use in an art form to tell the greatest story ever told. Next week, 8 people from RCEFC will use the power of their stories to share Christ as they follow Jesus in baptism. God bless you as you do that!
The fifth good thing about the D code fad is finally someone is saying Jesus has a wife and it’s a bride to die for!
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless …31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Eph.5:25-32 NIV)
The D Code novel brings out the topic, did Jesus ever had a passionate romance and got a wife? Answer is YES! The Bible says the bride of Jesus is this, you and I, the church. God is in love and would do anything to make his bride a beautiful pure and holy, radiant bride! He loved his wife He died for her. Why? Sure the church is not a supermodel. America’s next supermodel, hardly!! The church has not been spotless -sex scandals, corruption, immorality of all sorts has left a trail of destruction but yet Jesus loved the church, and will forgive her because she is the bride of Christ, and she’ll be spotless and he died to make it happen, giving himself for her! This is a story of amazing love and grace, a profound mystery! A page-turner! This is the story of God!
The sixth good thing about the D code fad is the world is waking up to the man called Jesus.
Question is will they recognize him? Do you? Have you received Him?
10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The D Code shows us that the much of the world still is in the dark about who Jesus is. Harvest field is ripe, do we see? Pray that the Lord would send workers to His harvest field (Lk.10:2). God is using the D Code, to give us His vision for a world that is lost. Jesus wants a wife, it is us. But to all who receive him, he would give the right to become a child of God, born of God. What a great thing it is if we are ! So no need to get upset about the novel, have fun with it and connect others to Christ with it and speak about His love for His bride.
