by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

The clank of iron. The smell of sweat. I was lifting weights at the gym, just about done with my first set. I strained against the machine and closed my eyes to push and pull with more concentration. I opened them again halfway through my reps, and my pupils slowly focused on a friend’s face who had slipped silently into my line of vision. I kept lifting.

“While you do that,” he said, “I wanted to ask you a question.”

Five more, four more, three more. “Sure, what’s u-p-p?”

Two more, one more. “I wanted to know what you thought of The Da Vinci Code?” Clank. Good Lord.

The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling novel by Dan Brown, has sold over 60 million copies since it came out in 2003, and has been translated into 44 languages. When I was last at Barnes and Noble there was an entire table full of The Da Vinci Code:

• paperbacks,
• hardcovers,
• large print editions,
• illustrated versions and
• a small group study guide rendition.

To my chagrin, the table was parked squarely in front of the “Religion” section. Talk about your non-sequitor; “fiction” never described a book so well. And now, of course, the movie with Tom Hanks is out in theaters and grossed over $224 million in the first weekend. Video rentals will follow, and Dan Brown is set for life.

I doubt if I’ll see the movie. Sorry. I did read the book a couple years ago. At the risk of coming across as a literary snob, I confess I only like good writing. The Da Vinci Code is a B- or C+ book at best, so it doesn’t make my heart beat faster to think of seeing the story splayed across the big screen.

Ironically, I think the Christian community is mainly responsible for the media feeding frenzy around The Da Vinci Code. There are now 40 – forty! – books in print which have been published for the sole purpose of refuting The Code. Forty! Some of them claim that the book has 467 errors of fact in it…did I mention “fiction”? I haven’t gone back through to count the errors. I do get daily emails for seminars on “how to decode The Code.”

I just don’t see it. Usually I’m the one interested in anything that engages our culture on the topic of faith, but this time I’m more puzzled than intrigued. I have little interest in hearing more about

• the subversive symbolism of Leonardo Da Vinci’s art (it’s not there),
• the inner workings of the Opus Dei secret society (I thought it was a secret?),
• the sacred sex rites of pagan Christians or
• the explicit sexual nature of church architecture (oh, please).

I am, however, interested in the comments of Christian people who say “The Da Vinci Code has really shaken my faith!” Faith in what? Just because someone figures out a way to get error-ridden, bad fiction published (therein lies the real genius of Dan Brown) does not make it true. I could write a book on “How to Build a Bridge,” but that doesn’t mean you should drive across it.

The most common questions that Da Vinci seems to elicit for Christians are around the origins of the Bible. For the record, let me make just three sample comments:

1. The idea that thousands of documents existed in antiquity which depicted the humanity of Jesus, and that they were purposefully destroyed in favor of those
   highlighting his divinity is not true. There were in fact a couple dozen “gnostic” documents which did not make it into the Bible, and these actually painted Jesus more as a kind of divine superman. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John show Jesus as far more human than most of the documents rejected for the scriptures.
2. The idea that the emperor Constantine put the Bible together is equally unsupportable. The Christian scriptures were almost totally set (within a book or two) by 190 AD, and very nearly identical to what we have today by 250 AD. Constantine did convene a key church council of pastors and scholars in 325 AD, but by all historical documents he had nothing to do with the content of the meeting.
3. The idea that Constantine destroyed key gospels in order to create his own version of the Bible, and that some of these were “rediscovered” amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950’s is ludicrous. The Qumran library was indeed a hugely important archaeological and biblical find. But out of 800 manuscripts found near the Dead Sea, 200 have pieces of the Old Testament. None contain New Testament texts, or mention Jesus, or John the Baptist, or Christians.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. If there is anything good that comes out of all this clamor over a very fictitious book, it may be that we are moved to consider again how it is that God has given scripture to us, and how He speaks through it.

But on the whole, I’m afraid that the Christian community is once again simply majoring in the minors. Something comes along (Mel Gibson’s Passion movie, The Da Vinci Code) and the media stirs it and we all get worked up and jump in with both feet. We write books, we refute, we write Briefs columns (!) until the next thing to come along restarts the Christian consumer feeding frenzy. We are nearly desperate to be culturally relevant.

I worry that what gets lost along the way is the solid, faithful, Biblical living out of our walk with Jesus. I worry that we get too caught up to simply respond to Jesus who said, “Come, follow me.”

That’s the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…not The Da Vinci Code.