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derekac
Posts: 1
Joined: May 2006
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May 22, 2006 9:00 PM
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I'm not sure this is an entirely helpful approach to take.
Is ridicule really the best way to encounter this movie?
we know that the historical basis for this film is at best, flimsy, and we know that the whole thing was constructed as a kind of �fiction� in the first place, The writers of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have admitted as much themselves. But what is more significant is the phenomenal success that that book, and 25 years later, the Da Vinci Code, has achieved. The ideas expressed are clearly giving answers, however implausible, to questions that the mainstream churches are failing to answer. Questions about power and authority, questions about the place of women, the place of sexuality. Even abstruse theological questions about the nature of Jesus. These questions are being discussed on TV, in pubs, in the newspapers, in a way that thirty years ago would have been thought inconceivable thirty years ago. God was dead back then. God was completely irrelevant to ordinary lives unless you were part of an obscure little group of the faithful.
But now �our� subjects are suddenly in vogue again. This book, and the new movie, give us an incomparable opportunity share the Gospel of Jesus in whom there is no Jew or Greek, Slave or free, male or female.
We have a unique opportunity and a unique position from which to engage with a unique cultural phenomenon. I pray that we can be faithful witnesses to a living and loving god.
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wp416
Posts: 1
Joined: May 2006
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May 23, 2006 9:05 AM
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No matter what you do, your response, or lack of one, will be considered "the wrong approach" by somebody.
What is the correct response to a terrorist attack, such as 9/11? Nothing? Most people in the USA would not agree with that,
Start a war? Some people in the USA would agree with that, depending on who it was, and some people wouldn't agree, no matter who it was. Some people would write "strongly worded letters" to the various Islamic Mullahcracies of the world, some people would say "we need more security checks at home", and ignore the issues of foreign policy.
The same thing is true, no matter what you do, with this book. The facts are, it's a page turner, it sells well, and it tells paranoid lies about an institution that many in America are all to used to distrusting and hating. You can ignore it. You can debate an author who has set himself up for victory either way. He claims some of it is true. He claims some of it is fiction. You can't win. You can ignore it. You can cry blasphemy. You can cry "idiot". Does any of it work? Not in a land where truth is of marginal interest at best, and where popularity and entertainment value are highly prized. Welcome to the Areopagus, boys.
Warren
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Dugorim
Posts: 1
Joined: May 2006
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May 24, 2006 9:02 PM
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Oh for goodness sake,
Yes, Dan Brown IS an atheist, he infinitely wants to attack christianity. (because he believes it is a hoax)
But NO, I can see from his piont of view why is it SO unacceptable that Christ took a wife? It was Jewish LAW to have a wife, it is quite possible that IF he had a wife she was not mentioned for the simple prospect that she had little importance to none at all. I don't really suspect the culprit could've been Mary, but it is quite probable that it was true.
The Bible leaves out so many things, so how could it be true? BECAUSE (yes I'm getting to it) It is to be assumed, it is to be assumed that Jesus wore clothes of the time and not a jean jacket, it is to be assumed that The Pharoh of Exodus strung his Chariots to horses rather than polar bears, why? because they did'nt have Jean Jackets and Polar bears, they had Horses and cloth and a law plainly written (though not often inforced) that all Jewish males should take a wife and make children to fill their shoes, less their land be seized after their death, so can it truely not be assumed that Christ had a wife and possibly a child? Is that so outrageous? That so many would cry out in terror over a best selling book? And would it hurt Christianity so much?
I agree, too many people take it as fact after they read it, but honestly, keep your head and it's not all that worth the protest effort. And, I'm sorry, I've never heard of the "Lizard Men" conspiracy.
(This is not a crackpot conspiracy, it's a historically probable theory, and there is NO NEED to insult Brown peronally, is that the teaching of Christ?)
-------------------------
"An Eye for an Eye, a tooth for a tooth!"
I'm sorry! I don't think god meant it that way, it may go meen something along the lines of
"No more than an Eye for an Eye, No more than a Tooth for a Tooth"
There, that fits that context of the Bible a bit better don'tya think?
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Zmirak
Posts: 4
Joined: Sep 2003
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May 28, 2006 10:14 PM
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Dan Brown does not simply assert that Jesus might have been married--a completely untestable historical hypothesis, for which ample negative evidence exists. (To wit: His followers considered him rightful King of the Jews... being slow to understand His mission. Would they have completely ignored His progeny, if any existed? Since being married and having children would have INCREASED His credibility among Jews, as you rightly assert, why cover it up? There was NO cult of celibacy in the Jewish world at the time, and little regard for it among Romans or Greeks either. Why FAKE something which only made people suspicious?)
No, Dan Brown denies the divinity of Christ, and asserts that it is a doctrine invented by politicians as a tool of political and cultural repression. What is worse, he does so not out of any personal conviction, but purely for profit. That is contemptible, and deserving of scorn. To say so is not unChristian. To say any less would be pusillanimous. It would constitute appeasement. One is called to turn the other cheek in cases of personal insult--not of highly successful, cynical attacks on the person of Christ and His church.
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