Tonight we had our big "cell" group meeting. We are down about 10 people now that the summer season has arrived. (It's still quite cool here and still no hot water in our building or most everywhere in this area.) After eating (Max and Vitaly prepared boiled sausages, some pasta, and the classic cucumber/tomator/oil salad) and worshipping, we studied through our chapters in Genesis and had discussion and prayer. In the small group I was in, one person talked about how they were troubled with how some people were offending other people in the church and it bothered him to see this happening, another talked about the difficulty of having a father who is an alcoholic, another shared about the problem of a father who has just returned home after living with another woman, another shared of her recent trip to visit her parents and was dismayed to find that after reading The DaVinci Code her parents and sister were convinced that Mary was Jesus's wife, etc.

We were sharing about troubles because for 13 years, Joseph (the Genesis one) had troubles, lots of them. But God was in control and God carried him through it all. But it took 13 years for him come to prominence in Egypt. A long 13 years. Give me patience, Lord, as we go through troubles.

Pray for my dad as he has been hospitalized due to some odd infection.

Don't get me started about Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. As many of you know, I have a BA and an MA in English. I have read a lot, I have read a lot of junk, I have read a lot of stuff that would make your head start to spin off, I know how to think about fiction, I have pondered it's place in our lives, I continue to read (am still working through Anna Karenina--Levin has been cutting grass for about 5 pages), and I have actually read The DaVinci Code. And here is my assessment:

It stinks.

It stinks because the lines between fact and fiction are becoming more blurred in our post-modern, post-everything world. Thus, fiction to many is no longer just fiction, something read to entertain and possibly make you think about life, but fiction (and images and film and TV and whatever anybody puts on the internet) has become a dominant means for the way worldviews are shaped for many, many people. Thus, a thriller written to make money by stirring up controversy is just as valid a source of information as historical documents and rational arguments. Thus, just like I disapprove of bad arguments or skewed evidence against the Christian faith, I don't like works of fiction that go after my Lord and make my faith out to be a sham. I just think it stinks. It stinks when in such a direct way under the guise of accurate research (note Brown's introductory remarks) my faith is made to look like something about as credulous as believing in the Easter Bunny. Brown's novel doesn't just attack the Catholic Church. His work promotes an old idea that directly calls into question the authenticity of the Gospels and the very core of the Christian faith. And that's a problem for me.

(Don't get me wrong--I don't think we have to be modernists or have a modernist epistemology to be followers of Christ. I am aware of that debate. So, however we come to believe something, my point is that it bothers me when the Lord is defamed whether through images, fiction, or argumentation.)

Christianity has been hegemonic in the West for so long and for about 150 years, it's been under major attack. This silly novel is another example of the popularity of the attack. We deserve some of it. Stupid things like the Inquisition, Crusades, segregation, the oppression of women and all sorts of recent scandals (priests abusing children, televangelists, health-wealth gospel) have continued to tear away at Christianity's roots so deeply embedded in Western culture. So I understand why people like this book. It's a fun thriller, a real page-turner. And it also takes a jab at organized Christianity which not many people really like. But it also says Jesus had children and the whole code is basically that Jesus's followers got it all wrong. And I don't have to like that, engage that, or pay to go see a film about that. I just think it stinks.

Here's a great link from a supposedly independent source--it's worth reading if you have some interest in this topic.