The publicity machine is ramping up for The Da Vinci Code. The movie will be out this weekend, and probably one of the biggest bits of genius involved in promoting it has been suckering nearly the entire Christian church into talking about it.
Either we’re “correcting its errors,” รก la Josh McDowell (who, by the way, stands to make some pretty good coin if he can sucker enough pastors into buying enough of his anti-Da Vinci Code studies) or we’re suggesting a full-on boycott like Barbara Nicolosi (who recommends that we attend any other movie this weekend to show “Hollywood,” as if Hollywood is a person, that we’d rather watch crap than heresy. Okay, that’s not the way she puts it; that’s just the logical conclusion of her reasoning.)
Thanks to the worldwide Christian conniption fit, I have to read about this bloody movie every day in Christianity Today’s email newsletter; I had to read about it this weekend in the Assemblies of God’s weekly magazine, Today’s Pentecostal Evangel; and I keep running into Christians on a daily basis who go on and on and on about it. In fact I was speaking to someone today whose pastor has embarked on a THREE WEEK SERIES about the Da Vinci Code. From the pulpit. Including study guides. So, for three weeks, that church doesn’t get to hear about Jesus’s love and God’s grace; they get to hear a blow-by-blow refutation of the latest movie from the director of The Grinch, Splash, and Cocoon. Has anyone, by the way, come to believe in Whos, mermaids, and spaceships full of old people as a result of those movies? No? Okay then.
Part of me says see the movie and boycott the Christian bandwagon. I’d much rather watch heresy than listen to stupidity.
I don’t blame the movie for distracting the church from its responsibility to seek and save the lost. Anything will distract the church from its duty. The church has the attention span of, to quote a different movie, a ferret on crack. If it’s not abortion, it’s the latest financial scandal; if it’s not gay bishops, it’s an unaccredited Christian college that doesn’t believe in academic freedom. So much of the news about the church has nothing to do with Jesus’s mandate to make disciples. If it did, we’d see real change in this country and many others. Instead, it has to do with the same sort of problem Paul advised Timothy against:
I urged you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those who are teaching wrong doctrine. Don’t let people waste time in endless speculation over myths and spiritual pedigrees. For these things only cause arguments; they don’t help people live a life of faith in God. The purpose of my instruction is that all the Christians there would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and sincere faith. But some teachers have missed this whole point. They have turned away from these things and spend their time arguing and talking foolishness. [1 Timothy 1.3-6
NLT ]
I fail to see how instructing the church against heresy teaches it to love one’s neighbor. Teach the church the truth; let the error unravel itself.