Da Vinci Code & Dogma

Yeah, I read it. I liked it, too. I know. Heresy. It falls into my least favorite literature category: Junk Food for the Mind.

Admit it. You read it, too, you're just not sayin' because your Christian brothers and sisters might raise an eyebrow at your base nature.

It's pure theological, biblical rubbish, of course. It's FICTION.

One question above all provides the religious titillation: Did Jesus Christ marry Mary Magdelene? Did they procreate? Another question provides the heresy: Is Jesus just a man? Nothing more. Not God. Not the Son of the Most High. Let me save you the research: No and yes, respectively. The last one, you'll have to take on faith, but so do all Christians.

Steve Bainbridge over at TCS Daily (via Instapundit)quotes C.S. Lewis (just happens to be my favorite Lewis quote):

Perhaps no one has ever captured the basic problem with the truth claims made on behalf of DVC and its ilk better than C.S. Lewis, who observed in Mere Christianity that:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

All Dan Brown, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and that whole crew have accomplished is getting richer by saying that "really foolish thing."

Amen Brother Lewis.

Why would I read a book that implied Jesus is not our Lord and Savior, you ask. I'll tell you why: Having grown up in a quasi-cult, taking negative reviews as rote doesn't sit well with me. That doesn't mean that every disgusting thing must be experienced to be understood. Hardly. But this book's author purported to present facts as authentic and true. And there were some interesting truths he included in the book mixed in with a lotta crazy. I won't go into them here.

Anyway, that's all I'll say about this controversy. If people were more well-versed Biblically, the churches wouldn't be so apoplectic. Weak minded, religion-lite and secularism has reduced theological knowledge to the very basics--the milk of the word. No one knows what the steak is, forget knowing how to cut it and "rightly divide it". The church fears that their people will be swayed by what would once have been considered outlandish nonsense. And maybe they will be swayed.

Whose fault is that?