The following was written in June, 2006, after I had read The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown. Whether you saw the movie or read the book, what I have written is still very relevant....
There was a time when truth seemed not hard to find—if you were determined, and asked the right questions.
1950s America was one such time. Truth was important in our culture. Even television served up weekly images of truth in black and white. One enduring image: Lucy was always in trouble for not telling Ricky the truth. Another was Dragnet, true stories from the files of the LAPD. Every week, detective Sgt. Joe Friday and his partner Frank Smith put the bad guy behind bars. In those days before CSI and DNA, much of the story revolved around these everyday heroes driving the then-uncrowded streets of Los Angeles to interview witnesses and gather evidence. Frequently, people launched into some irrelevant opinion-sharing. Joe Friday, determined to get the truth, would invariably interrupt (albeit politely): “Just the facts, ma’am.”
What happened to our history?
That time was not really so simple. Yet there was something different about the way we looked at life, (at least, for the majority). For some 20 years after World War II, we saw ourselves as the good guys, and we believed our leaders when they talked to us about important things. But Vietnam changed that. Those enduring images in black and white gave way to living—and dying—color in the mid-60s. Half-known names took on horrible new meaning: Dallas, Tet, My Lai, Kent State. Presidents couldn’t be trusted, our soldiers were called “baby killers” (and some were), National Guardsmen shot college students. Civil rights and civil unrest—people dying on the 6 o’clock news. A generation turned off to patriotism, Boy Scouts, and church on Sunday, and turned on to free speech, free love, Sgt. Pepper, and public angst. The loss of direction speeded up in the 70s: our President resigned, our embassy workers were held hostage in a puzzling Islamic revolution. The 80s granted some reprieve (Reagan made us proud to be Americans again, the Wall came down and the Soviet Union came apart), but the 90s witnessed our soldiers dragged through tiny Mogadishu—and that White House Intern. After Y2K failed to materialize, there was 9/11, binLaden, Sadaam, Baghdad. Parish priests did unspeakable things—and the church didn’t tell. No wonder that Americans are skeptical about traditional answers. Puzzle not at the runaway success of a novel that proclaims, “almost everything that the fathers taught us about Christ is false.” (character “Leigh Teabing,” pg. 235)
Why The Da Vinci Code matters: Robert Langdon has replaced Joe Friday
Why make a big deal about Da Vinci? Americans have already made the book and movie a big deal. Thinking readers—Christian and non-Christian—recognize “it just gets crazier and crazier.” Scholars, even non-Christian ones, have thoroughly debunked Dan Brown’s so-called “research.” However, the book/movie cannot be dismissed by resorting to “just the facts.” There is a place for presenting the facts if someone is honestly interested.
We make a big deal because the book raises troubling questions. It troubles both Christians and non-Christians. It troubles some Christians because they don’t know enough about the supposed “historical” background material (i.e., the “Priory of Sion,” the Knights Templar, the history of ancient biblical manuscripts, etc.,) so as to make an honest judgment on its credibility. It troubles some because they know that, if any of this “history” is true, it would destroy true Christianity.
The central fact of Christianity is the resurrection. If Jesus really rose from the dead, then Christianity is true: God really did intervene in history, Jesus is the divine Son of God, and his death was a substitution for our sin—that we might be forgiven and reconciled to God and given an eternal inheritance. If he did not rise from the dead, then the testimony of those who saw him is a lie, and there is no hope for any of us nor meaning to the universe.
The central documents that testify to this history (the New Testament) were written by eye-witnesses or those who spent much time gathering evidence and wrote under the direction and authority of Jesus’ first Apostles. These documents were completed by the end of the first century. The four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were collected and extensively quoted as authoritative by the early church fathers (as early as 150-200 A.D.). Paul the Apostle had been an inveterate enemy of Christ and his church—but met Christ on the Damascus Road. He preached the resurrection and wrote many of the letters that make up the New Testament along with the Gospels.
Da Vinci troubles many non-Christians because it adds one more nail in the coffin of “truth.” Dan Brown’s demonstrably false history doesn’t seem so far out to recent generations of Americans. Da Vinci has struck a cord that resonates with millions who have come to discount anyone’s absolute truth claims, who wonder if anyone can know the truth. We Christians must be patient and wise, not assuming that everyone who questions the Bible is trying to avoid accountability to God. This is why I gave so much valuable space above to listing some major events of the last half-century. These events have fallen like hammer-blows, crushing our ideals and leaving us open to a “no truth” mentality. Many who lived though those events have left their children “free to choose” what to believe. Having no confidence themselves that truth can still be known, for the sake of “truth” allowed their children to drift like a ship, leaving them without a secure mooring, without the power to find the land, and without a lighthouse to point them away from danger.
We make a big deal because the book and the movie typify so much of what is going on in American culture today. Fifty years ago, “Joe Friday” was seeking “just the facts.” Today, “Robert Langdon,” the main character in The Da Vinci Code, is so used to a way of thinking that sees truth as not absolute that he defines faith as “acceptance of that which we imagine to be true…” (pg. 341) Two destructive philosophies are taking advantage of the openness to this “no truth” mentality: one is post-modernism (i.e., “there are no absolutes”) and a “new” Gnosticism (i.e., “find the truth within yourself”). We will look at these in a subsequent article.
Those of us who understand the faithfulness of a sovereign God and the trustworthiness of his word (the Bible) are always to be ready, as Peter reminds us (1 Peter 3:15-16), to give a reason for the hope that is within us, and to do so with gentleness and respect. The hope that we have is eternal life, which is defined by Jesus as knowing God, and this, in personal relationship. The hope that we have is an assured hope, based on the promises of God and evidenced by the resurrection. Our hope is that we will share that resurrection, that we will gain the prize—who is Christ himself. “Robert Langdon” may have replaced “Joe Friday” in being representative of the way Americans think. But God remains unchanged. He is the “I Am,” the “self-existent One” (the true meaning of the name Yahweh). We who have placed our faith in Christ have experienced the truth of the promise Jesus made to all who trust him and the facts of his gospel and keep his word: “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Do you know the truth? Are you free?
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