True Believers and The Da Vinci Code

True Believers and The Da Vinci Code

HarleyDad used to read. It has been a long time; but one good book was Eric Hoffer’s True Believer. Eric Hoffer was a longshoresman with an excellent mind and insight on life.

Now in one sense I am a true believer myself and in one sense I am not. Not even all the apostles were true believers. There was always a sceptic or two in the midst such as St. Thomas, but even they became believers when they experienced the presence of the Risen Christ.

Without a strong belief in the resurrection, the disciples would not have been willing to encounter the violent deaths that they did encounter. Peter when fleeing Rome during the persecution would not have turned around to go back and experience the violent death by crucifixion that took not only his life, but that of his wife. Paul who had one time had been a sceptic regarding Christ, later wrote that if we do not believe the resurrection we are to be pitied by others who do not believe. At least 10 of the original disciples met death willingly and became martyrs (witnesses) who followed the path of sacrifice of Christ .

And so being a true believer, I greet Dan Brown’s statements in The Da Vinci Code not with alarm, but with a yawn. Dan Brown served up a warmed over stew made up of morsels from an earlier book “Holy Cross-Holy Grail.” However through excellent writing this stew was served up in a most delicious and appetizing manner. However, a false stew it is, complete with fake experts, forged documents and other assorted morsels designed to appeal to the ignorant.

After all if one has truly experienced the Living and Resurrected Christ, then when you have experienced what is Real it is difficult to believe what is false. For instance if I had been to a zoo and had seem a Bald Eagle and then someone told me that a canary was an eagle, I might try to convince them that they were wrong or simply smile and go on my way. After all, the canary is a bird, and it flies and so it must be an eagle. Once you have seen an eagle, you know the eagle. And it is NOT a canary.

It is for this reason that I am intrigued about how many people are willing to eat the soup served up to them.

It is some what difficult for one to believe that Jesus Christ slipped alway after having fooled the Romans skilled in crucifixion and fled to Europe with Mary Magdalene as his bride. Of course his line would be protected by a secret group. And all this time, I had assumed that it took faith to be a Christian. However, it must take double faith to believe this line of malarky. But then that is what fiction is all about. Why would a group of disciples and then later many others be martyred to protect a teacher that slipped away in the night to hide himself and raise his family.

And then there is that statement made by C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity about Jesus. He said something to the effect that if the Great Teacher said that He was the Son of God, then that leads to one of two conclusions. Either he was who he said he was or “he was as crazy as a poached egg.” I agree with C.S. Lewis.

We need to get straight on who Jesus is. Either we take him at his word or he was a charlatan, a fraud, a liar and a cheat who has duped the masses or he is who is says he is.
Dan Brown and the writers and producers of the Da Vinci Code have chosen one alternative. I prefer the other. It is as simple as that.

HarleyDad has seen the eagle and it ain’t no canary. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.