29 August 2005 Devotion for Today “Canceling the Code” Colossians 2:13-15
Today I want to continue the thoughts made last week concerning Dan Brown’s bestseller, The DaVinci Code which has won a great amount of critical acclaim in the past year. Someone asked me why I am so upset about the ridiculous notion that Jesus Christ would be married to Mary Magalene and that their offspring would become the leaders of the true church. “Have you read the book?” one asked, challenging my concerns. I admit that I have not read this blasphemous book for the same reason that I do not have to read Playboy magazines to know that they contain pornography. What is the big deal? Isn’t the novel just a piece of fiction, a story? True, it is a piece of fiction and it would not draw such concern if those reading it would be more discerning of reality. If there were any basis of truth to Brown’s story, God would have surfaced and protected the offspring to present them alive and well to the world at a time not long after Christ’s resurrection. God certainly protected the Christ child and enabled Mary and Joseph to flee from Herod and steal into the night toward
While Dan Brown asserts that his book is fiction, he asserts that it is based on fact. Perhaps he misleads people in order to get them to buy the book and quite cynically, it makes book financial sense to present the book in the false documentary form that he does. We ought really to see it as it truly is: The DaVinci Code is an antichristian diatribe seeking to promote a new form of Christianity more in line with neo-pagan thinking, capitializing on the collective ignorance of the history of Christian theology and thought. It has long been accepted that if someone has an agenda to present to the world (and the author certainly has the right to do this) he or she will present those ideas in a novel, poem, a movie, or some other form of creative genre. Brown asserts however that the so-called “facts” which he presents in many of his chapter subtitles are true when in fact they are speculative at best.
I dispute the DaVinci Code not because it is a scholarly attack on Christianity, but because it is a popular attack upon our faith. And the buying public seems to want to demand this book because it is popular, not because of its truth. The Apostle Paul continually battled this problem in the first century. Accurate scholarship was not generally available to most people because of their inability to read and write. But on top of that, many stories and myths circulated, giving a much distorted view of the world to explain ideas and concepts that they did not understand. Most of these myths were popular because they expressed hedonistic desires that most people had anyway. For example, ritual prostitution was often practiced in pagan temples- it is not difficult to understand why this would be popular. But this did not make it right nor did it express the truth that Ashtoreth would favor good fertility of livestock if those who worshipped her would engage in ritual orgies. These were ideas based on mythological ideas of how the world operated, but it had no basis in truth.
The Apostle Paul also battled notions found even among the strictly conservative Jews who believed that circumcision would mark one off as bound for heaven and in favor of God when he wrote in Colossians 2:13-15:
13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (NIV). Jesus Christ, Paul says, cancelled the code- the code of the law, the code of human ideas, even the DaVinci Code and makes a public spectacle of it by exposing their insufficiencies and inaccuracies, nailing them to the cross.
What ideas do you have that you feel bring meaning to your life? Have you thoroughly examined them? You have, of course, the right to believe them if you want. But does having the right to believe them make them true? Have the popularity of your ideas ever been tested in the light of real Biblical scholarship? Have you considered the Cross as the only way to triumph over your sins and to transform your life? I realize that this is a heavy way to begin on a Monday, but then perhaps that might just be the problem. When we flee what we don’t want to face the price for eventually facing it will be much harder later than sooner.
The Code has been cancelled. Have a blessed day.
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