"Stand in the place where you live, now face north. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before." -R.E.M.

Questioning the DaVinci Code

04/04/2007 08:56 AM Filed in: Theology

leonardo lisa

So here’s my plan: after being completely silent on the subject of The DaVinci Code for the last two years, I would now like to be the absolute last blogger on the entire internet to step up and comment on the book/movie that has caused quite a stir both in Christian and non-Christian circles.

I don’t plan on coming at this subject in the way most Christian bloggers have. Unless I get a lot of requests, I’m not going to do a series on the problems found in Dan Brown’s historically blundering novel. Sure, Brown completely misleads the reader on a number of facts: the purpose of the Counsel of Nicea, the nature of Constantine’s Christianity, the Nicean Creed, the date of the New Testament canonization, the reason for canonization, the nature of the Apocrypha, etc. It’s a long, extensive list, and it just goes to show that Brown was way more interested in writing an exciting piece of fiction than telling a story with any historical merit.

I’d like to come at the DaVinci code from a different angle than has been written about in countless “Cracking the DaVinci Code”-type books. The angle is one of relevance. Even if the story was true, would it matter?

I’ve read the book and I’ve seen the movie. Neither one angered me or made me want to call for a protest for just this reason: I think they are both completely irrelevant. Not in the way you may think, though. If Jesus wasn’t divine, that would truly be the “greatest cover-up in human history.” But what if indisputable evidence arose tomorrow that during Christ’s lifetime, He was married. What then? Would this revelation be enough to rock the foundations of Christian faith? Does the entire revelation of Christ as the savior of mankind hang on the question of whether or not he was a bachelor while He was on this earth?

The Christian faith is held by millions of people, and the way in which we hold it often dictates the things that we consider to be bedrock beliefs of the faith. In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell discusses two different ways that we often hold to the Christian faith. One resembles a brick wall, the other a trampoline. Bell explains:

“Somebody recently gave me a videotape of a lecture given by a man who travels around speaking about the creation of the world. At one point ins his lecture, he said if you deny that God created the world in six literal twenty-four-hour days, then you are denying that Jesus ever died on a cross. It’s a bizarre leap of logic to make, I would say...but he was serious.”
Bell goes on to explain that some people hold their faith like a brick wall. For them, each of the core doctrines is like a brick stacked one on top of the other. Any denial of one part of their faith, any removal of one “brick,” and the entire wall comes crashing down around them. Bell then poses this startling hypothetical scenario:

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being ‘born of a virgin’ also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?”

You see, if you hold your faith like a brick wall, one stacked on top of another, that revelation has just caused your wall to come crumbling down. Could you still love God or be a Christian? Is the way of living taught by Christ still the best possible way to live?

Or does the whole thing fall apart?

I’d like to live my life and hold my faith like a trampoline. If one spring in the trampoline is questioned we can continue to jump without the whole thing falling apart. I stand with Rob Bell when I say that I very much affirm historic Christian faith, including the virgin birth and the Trinity as well as the inspiration of the Bible and much more. I believe it, I teach it, and it’s foundational stuff for me.

But if the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?

All of this brings us to the DaVinci Code. We have no record in the New Testament whatsoever of Jesus having taken a bride or fathering children before his crucifixion and resurrection. But what if tomorrow a secret society that had been silent for two thousand years came forward with undeniable evidence that Christ had in fact married Mary Magdalen and had four children and a dog named Judas?

Is our faith strong enough, our belief in Christ solidified enough to withstand that kind of information without us doubting everything? Once again, if the whole thing falls apart when we rethink one spring, it wasn’t that strong to begin with.

This understanding of Christianity means that we don’t have to become outraged and upset every time something like the DaVinci Code comes along. If we embrace our faith like a trampoline, always jumping and inviting others to jump with us, we don’t have to stop leaping every time someone questions one of the “springs” of our faith. We can calmly and lovingly discuss our faith with them without being ultra-defensive and feeling threatened.

Then...we can ask them to jump with us.

Tags: DaVinci Code, Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis