I hang around with too many literary types. They read pop fiction, then want to know my take on it, and I have to gripe at them that I tend to read history and philosophy and don't have time for pop fiction… and then it leaks out that I just read Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, whereupon they exclaim, “Aha! You do read fiction!“ and then I have to explain the difference between classical and pop, and… sometimes it’s just easier to read the bloody pop.
Fine. Have it your way. I blew four hours of my life reading The Da Vinci Code. Are you happy now?
Unfortunately, when one reads a book of this type, and one happens to also be a Christian, the inevitable is gonna come up: “What’d you think of the premise?”
The premise is that a Harvard professor and a French cryptologist have to solve a murder mystery, which at the same time is wrapped up in the secret of where the Holy Grail is hidden. Yet the Grail, according to the book, is not a cup. “Holy Grail” is a mistranslation of “Holy Blood,” so the Grail is actually written records proving that Jesus has direct descendants, through his wife Mary Magdalene, that exist to this day, descended through the Merovingian kings of France, hidden by the Knights Templar. Supposedly both the book’s murder victim and Leonardo da Vinci were grand masters of an organization holding the Catholic Church hostage with this secret; and now the Church wants it destroyed. And if I say much more I’ll ruin the ending.
A lot of this Jesus/Mary love child stuff can be found in Holy Blood Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, (which I’ve read; which is stupid) and there’s no end to the speculation about what secrets the Templars discovered in Jerusalem during the Crusades. Conspiracy theories about the Templars go way back. This is nothing I haven’t heard before. The only difference between then and now is that the theories are in a popular novel.
There were conspiracy theorists about the Kennedy assassination long before Oliver Stone’s JFK came out; the movie just gave them credibility because it was so well-made. Same deal with The Da Vinci Code. It’s actually a pretty good book. So people might read the book and start taking them seriously, just as people started believing Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy after JFK came out. People don’t bother to sift through the evidence as to what is fact and what is fiction after they see it in pop fiction. They just enjoy the fiction… and in order to enjoy the fiction, they suspend disbelief… and after the fiction’s over, they’ve suspended disbelief just long enough to actually accept the fictional conspiracy theory as plausible.
That was always my biggest gripe about the Left Behind novels. Shoddy theology; but the first novel was actually pretty compelling, and hooked people into reading the series, even though the quality gradually deteriorated into third-rate crap. But people didn’t stop suspending their disbelief. They actually believed the End would unfold this way, with the Antichrist as a bad Lex Luthor impersonation, miracles that were indistinguishable from Hollywood special effects, and a lead character that reminded me a little too much of Chuck Norris as Walker: Texas Ranger. Interestingly, the pastor in the movie is one of the actors from that show. Which leads me to the Cloud Ten movies… but nah, I won’t get into Kirk Cameron’s crappy acting job.
So the Catholics are concerned that people will start believing the heresy, for obvious reasons. I say a little controversy is good publicity. It’ll get some people to seriously ask questions about this stuff, and give God an opportunity to pull ’em into his church. The conspiracy nuts… well, they were conspiracy nuts already.
Besides, when it gets right down to it, so what if Jesus and Mary were married and had kids? Does that mean that Jesus isn’t Messiah and Son of God? Okay, so it’ll mess a little with some of those Christ as Bridegroom/New Jerusalem as Bride of Christ metaphors we find in Revelation. They’re only metaphors anyway. It makes no difference to my theology, or to Jesus’s relationship to his Father, or his sacrificial death, or anything; and scripture never says anything one way or another about his marital status. Big deal.