At the risk of offending some of my Christian friends, I feel compelled to express my own opinion about the Christian hubbub over the US debut of the movie "The Da Vinci Code" tomorrow. Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Catholics seem to be quite disturbed about this fun little work of fiction. A Vatican official has even called for a boycott of the movie because the story is full of "offenses, slander, historical and theological errors concerning Jesus, the gospel and the church."
Pardon me for thinking but it seems everyone is missing the point here. It seems to me that someone ought to send these reactionaries to a dictionary. The whole matter would have been over before it started:
"fic·tion (fkshn) n.
1. (a) An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented. (b) The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. A lie.
3. (a) A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact. (b) The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels and short stories. "
The book and the movie are FICTION, folks! Had Dan Brown categorized his novel as a work of non-fiction, I might better understand the fire and brimstone of Christian wrath over the story. He did not. Instead, he wrote a fictional story that provides a fun, thrilling little romp through a quest to solve a modern-day murder perpetrated based on an ancient mystery in which a few manufactured zealots have invested their time, energy, and souls to protect.
The closest you might come to works even slightly worthy of Christian outrage are books by a trio of authors (Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln) whose works were said to have been derived from extensive research. If you're interested in learning more about some of the theories alluded to in "The Da Vinci Code," check out "The Messanic Legacy" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." I highly recommend them both; they are fascinating reads even though some of the research behind these books was later discredited.
Need I remind anyone that politics, entertainment, and religion -- in my mind, just synonyms for each other, really -- have been co-mingled throughout history? They always have been and they always will be. Why? Well, in my humble opinion, it's because such a large extent of each is based on the "suspension of disbelief." Heck, many aspects of day-to-day life require that of us!
I suppose you could call me a heretic but I'm not a Christian. Not much of an insult. What I am is a seeker; one who has spent a good deal of her life pursuing some modicum of spiritual truth. Oddly enough, just when my search for it ended, a grail full of spiritual truth found ME instead. That big gulp of spiritual truth blessed me with a belief in a Supreme Being, a Creator, One who would be much wiser than to trust His children with the truth about anything, much less trust the hand of those same children to write it!
Pardon me for thinking but it seems everyone is missing the point here. It seems to me that someone ought to send these reactionaries to a dictionary. The whole matter would have been over before it started:
"fic·tion (fkshn) n.
1. (a) An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented. (b) The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. A lie.
3. (a) A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact. (b) The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels and short stories. "
The book and the movie are FICTION, folks! Had Dan Brown categorized his novel as a work of non-fiction, I might better understand the fire and brimstone of Christian wrath over the story. He did not. Instead, he wrote a fictional story that provides a fun, thrilling little romp through a quest to solve a modern-day murder perpetrated based on an ancient mystery in which a few manufactured zealots have invested their time, energy, and souls to protect.
The closest you might come to works even slightly worthy of Christian outrage are books by a trio of authors (Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln) whose works were said to have been derived from extensive research. If you're interested in learning more about some of the theories alluded to in "The Da Vinci Code," check out "The Messanic Legacy" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." I highly recommend them both; they are fascinating reads even though some of the research behind these books was later discredited.
Need I remind anyone that politics, entertainment, and religion -- in my mind, just synonyms for each other, really -- have been co-mingled throughout history? They always have been and they always will be. Why? Well, in my humble opinion, it's because such a large extent of each is based on the "suspension of disbelief." Heck, many aspects of day-to-day life require that of us!
I suppose you could call me a heretic but I'm not a Christian. Not much of an insult. What I am is a seeker; one who has spent a good deal of her life pursuing some modicum of spiritual truth. Oddly enough, just when my search for it ended, a grail full of spiritual truth found ME instead. That big gulp of spiritual truth blessed me with a belief in a Supreme Being, a Creator, One who would be much wiser than to trust His children with the truth about anything, much less trust the hand of those same children to write it!
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