January 19, 2004

• The da Vinci Code

  
  

  Ok, this entire blog is not going to be dedicated to the book and neither am I going to reveal any spoilers.  But I finished it on Friday, and while it was pretty entertaining, I gotta say, it wasn't exactly beautiful prose, which was encouraging to me, cuz I figure I can do better than that.  There are a few other things that occurred to me while reading the book.  I was kind of glad that he brought out all these wacky Christian theories, because much of the general public has similar vague suspicions and to have someone reproduce them in a work of fiction gives Christians the ammo to say, when confronted with such theories in real life, "Where'd you get that idea?  The da Vinci Code?  HAHAHAHAHA."  Cuz the fact is, the author takes some serious liberties with the truth, especially the sections on church history, in order to make for a more compelling read.  In other words, he creates fiction.  He does it skillfully enough to make it seem accurate, and lazy-minded readers probably will accept it as such, but hey, what can you do?

  
  

  The other thing it made me realize is, I need to be up-to-date on these controversial ideas.  Does anyone know the book or the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ?  Well, most of you are probably too young to remember this, but when that movie came out in 1988, there was a huge controversy about it.  All these Christian groups boycotted that movie and criticized Martin Scorsese (he's a practicing Catholic) for making it.  The ruckus was about the last scene of the movie where Christ is portrayed as dreaming about sex, a family, home, children, essentially yielding to the last temptation that Satan throws at him.  I was in high school at the time, and I knew what the movie was about, and I asked my youth pastor what he thought about it.  He said he didn't recommend seeing it because it simply wasn't useful to entertain wacky ideas about Jesus in my head.  To paraphrase a verse from the Bible, "[All art] is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."  That made sense to me, and really, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to picture Willem Dafoe (who plays Christ) in my mind every time I set out to pray.  So I never did watch it, and I've pretty much steered clear of any movies that attempted to depict Biblical stories (even the Jesus film.  I know, supposedly, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world have accepted Christ after watching that movie, but do they really know Christ or does that image from the movie become an idol that they unwittingly worship?  Man, that whole issue is so complex, it gives me a headache), but after reading the da Vinci Code, I feel I need to know what the public is consuming.  After all, this dang book has been #1 on the NYT Bestseller's List for like 40 straight weeks.  Same thing goes for Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, coming out in April.  I was planning on not watching it cuz I felt, and still do feel, that the potential for spiritual harm is greater than the potential for spiritual good.  But y'know, the situation is what it is.  We're living in some seriously confusing times, and I didn't make the rules, but I still have to play the game...

  • 1:15 am
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