Behold the Son of Man who takes away the sins of the world

I finished reading the Da Vinci Code a few days ago. Sean said he’s been told it is poorly written.

I didn’t think it was poorly written. The first few chapters, however, did give me the impression that the writer is quite vain- didn’t like the way he described the attributes of the characters up front, which actually compromises the reader’s privilege in savouring the characters’ subtle development as the story progresses. It is like, ok, all these descriptions need to be done so let’s just get it out of the way.

The story was interesting and at many parts I didn’t want to put the book down. There were also parts I couldn’t be bothered with lengthy descriptions and flipped pages.

So here’s the crux. This is a work of fiction. That’s it.

Why did it cause so many ripples in the religious and non-religious communities? Why did National Geographic devote so much resource to the exposition of assumptions made in this book and to the Gospel of Judas to undermine the Bible that is now used by the Christian faith?

It must be because faith and religion are important. And that Christianity is very much alive.

I read it somewhere that how much time you spend on an activity denotes how much that activity means to you. If I spend a lot of time with my kids and insist I don’t leave work past 7pm (like my VP, yay!), it is because I love them more than my work. In other words, you put your resources (like time) in matters of priority.

Why do I call the Da Vinci Code a work of fiction? Well, ask him. He will say as much.

I am asked by friends if I got agitated by the claims made by Dan Brown, the author, because those claims challenge the validity of my faith? The answer is no, not at all.

I can explain this empirically (yes, empirically!), and I can do it from the heart.

Let me start with the empirical because this world loves scientific proof. Archaeologists and historians would concur and tell you that the lesser the years an original document is to the time an event that document documents, the more accurate it would be. Namely, if today I found a piece of news written about a particular bombing during World War II written in 1944, it is accepted by the scientific fraternities as more accurate than if I discovered an article written about the same incident in WWII in 1954.

So, many events written in our textbooks are based on original documents (yes) that describes events in the past, but these original though they may be documents, are written say, a few hundred, or a few thousand years after the events. Why? For many reasons- no pen, no ink, no paper, no written language, etc, until all such are created or evolved.

The books of the Bible, on the other hand, are copied from the original documents less than 150 years after they were written. That would make it more accurate than the sources from which our history textbooks get their information.

So that means the book of Luke was copied from original texts of Luke 150 years from whence Luke first wrote his book. Where is Luke’s book, the one he handwritten? I don’t know- I have not delved that deep. If you want to know, read The Case for Christ. It was written by a skeptic of the validity of the Bible as a historical document, and by extension, that Jesus Christ is God and Man.

I can also tell you that there WAS a Council of Nicea but what they deliberated and voted on, was not whether Jesus was god or man (the book said that Jesus’ status as God and not mere mortal man was accorded as a result of a vote of the said council). I know this from another exposition and that same talk debunked many half-truths that were made that way to make a work of fiction compelling. I can go dig up those notes but I really don’t care.

Do I not care to delve deeper? I don't care to. And here is where I explain from the heart.

If my bestfriend sits next to me, we talk, we cry, we laugh; and in the course of our lifetime we grow up together and carried each other through good and bad times- do I need her birth certificate to tell me she is real? If she brings me soup when I am sick, and drives me to the airport when I need to fly- am I not touched?

Jesus is like that to me. I feel him in my heart. I know and I see the steps He guides me in Spirit. I even know sometimes, He cries when I cry. I don’t need endless debates and rims of historical ‘facts’ to establish whether He is real. I KNOW HE IS REAL.