Recently, as I was relaxing in our living room sofa, my ten year old son asked “Daddy, what is the Da Vinci Code?” That moment, I realized that there would be millions of children around the world asking their parents the same question. As Christian parents, what can we say about this cultural and religious syndrome from which arise huge arguments and conflict?

IMAGINATION OR TRUTH?

Dan Brown's, The Da Vinci Code was first published in 2003 and sold roughly 25 million copies worldwide in 44 languages. This number is likely to rise even further with the release of the movie last May starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard. Here's a summary of the book for those not familiar with the story.

Late one night, the curator of the Louvre is murdered inside the museum. The victim, we are told, is also the head of the Priory of Sion, a secret society. In his pocket the police found the name of Robert Langdon, a historian and professor of religious symbology at Harvard. As he and Sophie Neveu, a gifted crypotologist and the curator's niece, became involved in solving the riddle that take them back to Leonardo da Vinci, they discover that an arm of the Catholic church is involved in an attempt to protect a secret so significant as to undermine the very foundations of history and Christianity as we know it. That secret is that the 'Holy Grail' was not a cup as generally supposed, but rather Mary Magdalene herself, the wife of Jesus and mother of a child to Him who established a 'holy blood line' (evidenced by secret ancient documents) that continues to this day. She is the 'sacred feminine' whose existence has been covered up by the church over centuries. This (fictional) secret, if revealed to the world, will prove once and for all that 'almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false'.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CODE

As you read the summary, you can almost grasp the impact the book has had in leading numbers of its readers to question their traditional understanding of Christianity. Through reading the book, numerous unbelievers found the reason they should not trust the Bible, and many with faint belief turned their backs on Jesus. I still remember the youngster from San Francisco sitting next to me in an airplane flying out from the beautiful island of Boracay where I spoke at the National Conference of CEF Philippines. He was fervently reading The Da Vinci Code all through the flight. He didn't seem to be a Christian and I was wondering what belief the book would lead him to. I actually heard some people say, “After reading this book, there is no reason for me to go to church.” What about our kids? If the boys and girls of Asia Pacific Region read the book or watch the movie, what would be their natural conclusion about the Christianity?

OUR RESPONSE

There are three main areas we need to explain to children when we talk about The Da Vinci Code.

1. The first area is about the Bible.
   
   The Da Vinci Code claims that the Bible is a product of man, not of God. In the center of Teabing's argument is the view that there are gospels other than those included in the Bible. These other gospels are allegedly the earliest records of Christianity, telling the true story of Jesus and the early church. Is this argument true? Not at all! Contrary to this argument, the books in the New Testament canon were all written in the first century. The biblical gospels that tell the story of Jesus were all written between 50-70 AD, within one generation of Christ's death, some 100 years before the earliest Gnostic Gospels (other gospels). Other gospels do not have any authenticity at all. We can explain to children that we don't need to listen to the books with no inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
   
   
2. The second area is about Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
   
   Is she really the Holy Grail? For this argument, Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper is crucial. Teabing's interpretation is that the person sitting next to Jesus was not John, as tradition has led us to believe, but Mary Magdalene. And Jesus had just declared that she, not Peter, was to be the head of His church. Will this be a correct interpretation? By no means! If Mary was also at the Last Supper, one of the disciples would have to be missing! There were 12 disciples plus Jesus, making 13 in all, not 14, which would have been the case if Mary had been present. Surely if Da Vinci wanted to make such a point, he would have taken pains to include the 14. Also, there is no historical evidence to sustain the theory that Mary was ever married to Jesus. We can explain to children that this is a pure imagination by the author of the book.
   
   
3. The third area is about Jesus' deity.
   
   Is it really at the Council of Nicaea summoned by Constantine where Jesus was declared as God and until that moment of history, He was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet… a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless, a mortal? Perish the thought! The Gospels themselves repeatedly proclaim that Jesus is God (John 1:1-4). And Jesus also acknowledged Himself as God who existed before the world begun (John 17:24). Furthermore, all the major early church fathers including Ignatius, Clement, Tertullian, Novatian and Methodius confessed that Jesus is the true living God.
These are the main three areas we need to deal with children when they show curiosity about The Da Vinci Code. Remember, every crisis opens a door of opportunity. Even though The Da Vinci Code is a grave challenge to Christian parents and teachers, we can use these phenomena for the good of our Christian education and strengthen the faith of our boys and girls.


Yours for the children of the AP Region,

DAVID RA
Asst to the Regional Director
CEF AP Family News
Apr-Jun 2006