It’s No Secret

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I think it’s a basic human desire to be “on the inside,” to have secret knowledge, to belong to the group of people who are “in the know.” Isn’t that what tempted Eve back in the garden? Since the time of Christ, devotees of attaining secret knowlege have been referred to as Gnostics.

I felt a little manipulated, reading this book. Dan Brown is a very cunning author. As the codes, secrets, connections and riddles converge, they reveal concepts that I found very offensive, twisting the truth that my life is built upon. But, one of the main promoters of these ideas turns out to be the unexpected villain, so you are tricked into transferring your disgust onto him while the other “insiders” seem pretty much OK by comparison.

The fact of the matter is, you don’t have to join a secret society to get access to the way, the truth, and the life: “… since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20) No one group of people – whether intellectuals, governments, organized religion, secret societies – has a monopoly on the truth.

I also didn’t like how sex-saturated the book was, but not because I believe sex is dirty and sinful as Dan Brown accuses the Catholics of insisting. No… I believe God gave us sex as a gift, for men and women to enjoy in the context of marriage, as an earthly picture of the union we will eventually have with God in heaven. The church is intended as the Bride of Christ! (That’s the reason Jesus never got married – as the book explains, marriage was an integral part of the Jewish culture and a good Jewish man would always marry.)

“‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Ephesians 5:31-32