An old man looks back on his life. He
has always been faithful to his wife of 53 years and
she to him. They have raised their four kids who are
all doing well with their own families. He retired
from his job well respected and admired. He has been
a faithful Christian since he was 16 years old. He
helped others when he could, even when he had to do
without. By the grace of God he has accomplished a
great deal. But a group of "intellectuals" decide to
take a closer look at his life. They don't believe
that a monogamous marriage is realistic. So they
decide that he "fooled around." From there they
determine that his wife was an alcoholic, due to
having to cope with his adultery; his daughters were
probably molested as children; and his son had
homosexual tendencies because Dad's infidelity
confused him sexually. Their vote declares that, not
only is the old man not the paragon of virtue and
the pillar of society that his peers think him to
be, rather he's the poster boy of dysfunction and
depravity! All of this because of their belief that
a monogamous marriage is unrealistic.
I know that the above scenario is
nonsensical. These leaps in logic would never
happen, right? Not unless you changed the old man to
a thirtysomething itinerant preacher who lived in
Palestine almost two thousand years ago. And the
debate is changed from the old man and his family to
the preacher and what He said and did. Make those
corrections and you have the Jesus Seminar, a group
of "scholars" who gained notoriety in the 1990’s and
disbelieve in the possibility of the supernatural,
now or ever. Because of this bias they voted that
the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ and a
host of other miracles in the Gospels never happened
but were fables that gradually became regarded as
fact. Their normalization of Jesus is not based on
new found archaeological or textual evidence but
upon their prejudiced, "This can't be!" At that rate
you simply dismiss anything that violates your
sensibilities.
Today “The Da Vinci Code” in book and
movie form has taken up the banner of the Jesus
Seminar. Ideally faithful Christians could write off
“The Da Vinci Code” as the nonsense that it is and
expect others to do so as well. But that’s not the
tendency of our culture. George Barna of the Barna
Research Group wrote, “Many followers of Christ fear
that the movie, which will be even more accessible
to the public at-large than the book, will distort
people's theological perceptions. This fear is
well-founded. Americans already possess an
unorthodox profile of religious beliefs,
indiscriminately blending biblical and cultural
views. Among adults who are aligned with a Christian
church, 59% do not believe that Satan exists, 42%
contend that Jesus Christ committed sins during His
earthly tenure, and just 11% believe that the Bible
is the source of absolute moral truth. In fact,
millions of Americans are confused about the Bible.
On the one hand, six out of ten (61%) believe that
‘every word in the Bible is true and can be
trusted.’ On the other hand, only half as many
affirm that the Bible is ‘totally accurate in all of
the principles it teaches.’ Americans admit that
they are more likely to seek theological clarity
from friends, family, experiences and even media
input than from diving into biblical texts.”
This morning we’re going to examine “The
Bible vs. The Da Vinci Code”. Is there good reason
to believe the Bible is true? Is “The Da Vinci Code”
nothing more than a harmless fantasy? Do souls hang
in the balance? Let’s see.
God bless you,
Brad Fry
