http://bit.ly/EKOPK - - - But Brown doesn't have the soul of a true-believing Enemy of the Faith. Deep down, he has a fondness for the ordinary, well-meaning sort of Catholic, his libels against their ancestors notwithstanding. He's even sympathetic to the religious yearnings of his Catholic villains - including, yes, the murderous albino monks.
This explains why both "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" end with a big anti-Catholic reveal (Jesus had kids with Mary Magdalene! That terrorist plot against the Vatican was actually launched by an archconservative priest!) followed by a big cover-up. A small elect (Tom Hanks and company, in the movies) gets to know what really happened, but the mass of believers remain in the dark, lest their spiritual questing be derailed by disillusionment and scandal. Having dismissed Catholicism's truth claims and demonized its most sincere defenders, Brown pats believers on the head and bids them go on fingering their rosary beads. ... The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don't suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion's dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who's too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they're making or how many times they've been married. These are Dan Brown's kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who's a thoroughly modern sort of messiah - sexy, worldly and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity. But the success of this message - which also shows up in the work of Brown's many thriller-writing imitators - can't be separated from its dishonesty. The "secret" history of Christendom that unspools in "The Da Vinci Code" is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling - they're far, far weirder than that - nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - jealous, demanding, apocalyptic - may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he's the only historically plausible Jesus there is. For millions of readers, Brown's novels have helped smooth over the tension between ancient Christianity and modern American faith. But the tension endures. You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can't have both. - - - An excellent article, with which I find myself in agreement mainly. As a recovering Catholic, my main problem with modern Christianity is its fractured, fratricidal character. A deeper reading of Scripture than is currently possessed by any denomination to which I have belonged or belong reveals a Creator whose creative purpose is so much more wondrous than a mere reading of any of their catechisms and doctrinal position papers gives clue. I think many Christians are lured by the desire for a deeper spirituality in modern mysticism, but herein lies the danger: The god of this world, Satan, has a smorgasbord of false spirituality to offer, complete even with whatever kind of healing power "makes you believe", ostensibly to set us free from "organized religion", but in fact to put us under his harsh dominion, while he still has "time" to play God and boss his demons around. I will even go so far as to suggest some Christians, irrespective of denominational affiliation, are prone to accept his spiritual authority sooner than the Lord's, because in our fleshly nature there is this harsh logic of kill-or-be-killed that we identify with a kind of universal truth (in fact its mainly a fleshly truth, thus ephemeral). So, "religiosity" as a phenomenon is also an expression of a desire by well-meaning folk to embrace the nicer side of faith, but unchecked by real spiritual growth it eventually becomes an expression of the same fleshly logic for which Christ suffered on the cross. Christians need I guess to find the least common denominator of the faith before they can grow into its fullness, but how to do that without losing the sense of wonder one experiences at the moment of conversion? Maybe that is the key--capturing and keeping that child-like wonder--I don't know, I just heard that somewhere. ;) I'm not talking about some doctrine-leveling ecumenism, which reduces Jesus to some "least common denominational" checklist of do's and don'ts, but a total view of the Gospel that uproots all the man-made traditions and myths that confound the plain meaning of Christ's message of reconciliation and peace with God. This is why I think Catholicism is such an easy target in the modern era by the Dan Browns of the world: it's loaded with that kind of arbitrary and cultural-historical crud Jesus himself railed against when trading barbs with the Sadducees and Pharisees. But other denominations, yea, all of them, have their substitute made-up traditions as well. (I currently attend and am even a freshly-minted deacon at a Baptist church here near Tampa, where I really enjoy the fellowship and worship, but for the life of me cannot find evidence that Jesus and the apostles drank Welsh's Grape Juice at the last supper anywhere in the Scriptures... ;) ) Only in the spirit is true religion found---not that "big tent" kumbaya crap that fosters cognitive dissonance and fake co-habitation of thought between mortal enemies, so much the focus of modern secularism. (Because while we are still in the flesh, these enemies do exists, and we cannot mix with them in spirit or truth without risk of spiritually damaging consequences.) The thing I struggle with, naturally, is that part of my soulish nature that wants constantly to take this physical world and all its goings-on so damned seriously. Evidence of it even in this esteemed list's archives abounds, as recently as this morning. :) It matters spiritually what is happening but in the big scheme of things the physical here-and-now is an illusion that, once it passes away, will in retrospect I think be full of "Oh, now I get it" proofs of what is good and true, even to those who refused to seek or embrace it while "alive in the flesh", though it will be a bit late for them to jump on the bandwagon. And when that moment of universal revelation happens, it won't even be as obtuse as Ed's comic strip joke at Stephen Russell's expense. ;) - Bob. _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
