Sorry Bombtruck

But its Twofer Wensday for you

Making this post an almost trifecta for me is that Bombtruck and I talked this out over YM.

But first let me put out the Official Disclaimer.

I am not a Christian, though I'd imagine I was technically one on paper when I was real little and my parents needed free babysitting. Never been baptized and until a masonic ritual never had any ritual experience remotely like the sacrament of wine and bread.

Furthermore I do not believe there is evidence for a Historical Jesus of Nazareth. Now their may have been some person to whom the Jesus in the bible was based upon, but not the literal person in the bible.

Further Furthermore the greatest condemnation of Christ being the Messiah can be found in the bible if you know where to look, so using the bible to prove Jesus wasn't married is dubious as I can use the bible to “Prove” Jesus wasn't the messiah.

However if their was not a real flesh and blood Jesus of Nazareth the impact the man, his example, and the church spawned from people who believe in him on the whole has been so great for humanity and society that it really doesn't matter if he was ever real.

So.... lets move on.

What does it say about a Hollywood production like "The Da Vinci Code" that bashes belief in Christianity that it gets THIS kind of reaction from people who are most likely to buy its premise?

-HOW- Bombtruck?

Now lets take a look at Christianity as a whole, there is a very hard case to make that the book and movie at its thesis makes MODERN Christianity in any way invalid, or bashes the belief. Indeed the movie is very gnostic in its fundamental themes. “Secret Knowledge”

You cannot be justly bashed if you don't know the Secret. The Protagonists work very hard to find the Secret.... so again that by its nature isn't a Bash

Now if you are the Catholic Church and especially if you are the Opus Dei you might have a case to say the book is Bashing you. But the film and book -themselves- do not Bash Christianity in any real sense of the word unless you believe Jesus being married, and having a Bloodline attacks Christianity.

So lets first put aside how it isn't biblical (I could make an excellent case reading the bible and using historical context that -a- Jesus was married, and he was probably married to -b- the Beloved Disciple. Which would not be a major stretch -but a non scriptural stretch- to put Mary Magdeline in that role)

But lets step away from the bible for a moment

IF Jesus was married and had a family, would that take away one iota from the message Jesus provided to the world?

Anyone who wants to answer this needs to know that I do not consider scriptural evidence of why Jesus wasn't married as a valid answer. Because we are not talking about what the bible actually says for a moment, we are talking about a much larger issue. Does a celibate Jesus end up being a Stronger and more valid Jesus?

The idea of a “Conspiracy” to hide this fact from the Christian community as a whole is largely asinine and easily refuted when you actually read how doctrines were established. But lets take a moment aside again.

Lets say this is 150% true for a moment, how does that damage the Christianity you feel today?

And for this please don't quote scriptures to me. I am asking for an argument why flawed men obscuring facts about Jesus would impinge on the value of the message. If as many have argued that the bible is complete and influenced by god, perhaps God finds the fact Jesus married and produced offspring as irrelevant to future believers. And as God creates all things both good and evil, it is not a stretch to say that god inspired them to write that which was important from their highest faculties and allowed them to ignore that which their lowest faculties despised.

So you need to do better then go with a divine inspiration argument, because the idea of a conspiracy to hide those facts can be entirely within the realm of divine inspiration.

So to Quote Bombtruck again

What this is about is a ficticious movie being played up as some sort of proof Christianity is a fraud.

again Does it? does the fact jesus had a wife being omited from the bible make the bible or any of the subsiquent developments of the Church a fraud?

Or does a Christian community which feels it is being persecuted, and having its values maligned and marginalized see devil's around every corner?

And in the end.... the movie, like the book SUCKED.

and this protest movement, like the protest movement for "The Passion of the Christ" will make a bad movie HUGELY profitable.

and this ignores what I feel should be the larger and more important point for the Christians today.

Vast numbers of Christians out there in TV land are ignorant of the Bible and ignorant of what their faith stands for. They don't know why things are the way they are. And if you try to refute me on that i will raise you the collected “DaVinci” works of Dan Brown. Clearly people want to know why the church says what it says and believes what it believes. So instead of allowing an author of fiction to fill that vacuum while you raise tons of money to protest him, maybe you should TEACH your faith.

The early church struggled with many of the very fundamental ideas and concepts Christians today either struggle with in their day to day lives, or poo-poo out of hand. Would not the faith be richer if they could be taught that the earliest followers of Christ had these exact same struggles of faith?Would it not benefit them to see how these struggles were resolved by these earliest Christians to not only help guide them, but to help them build their resolve in their own faith?

Wouldn't teaching them WHY it is important that Jesus became man (and was not a man who became god) to the theology of the bible, and to their own lives benefit the faithful more then wasting money attacking an author of a really poor work of fiction.

When we look at the Churches that are beating the odds we see Churches that not only demand a more active Christian life style of their faithful, they also guide their faithful into a deeper knowledge and faith in the bible and their religion. All this flapping about Dan Brown is part of everything that is wrong with Christianity. Instead of fighting ignorance with education, it fights ignorance with rhetoric. It doesn't place a call on Christians to deepen their faith. And it aids the moneychangers in the Christian temples of the day.

Do what I plan to do. Ignore the awful movie by Dan Brown. If you ignore it... it will fade into the obscurity it deserves.