The movie “The Da Vinci Code” based on Dan Brown’s book of the same name was recently released. There seems to be a fear that this work of fiction may deviate beliefs from many of the traditional Christian teachings. This is what I think.
I was raised a Catholic, but now I’m not even a Christian. What changed my belief was not because some author wrote a compelling book, nor was it because of a movie like the Martin Scorsese movie “The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ.” I lost my faith simply by reading and analyzing the accepted scriptures.
All forms of Christianity originated in the early Catholic Church. Due to politics, Christianity was divided into different sects, but they all seem to have the same basic belief that Christ was the son of God and that he died for our sins.
The part of him dying for our sins is what I don’t quite understand. According to Christian doctrine, everyone is born with “original sin” because Adam disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. And because of our “original sin”, we needed a “redeemer” to save us. Therefore, God sent his only begotten son to die for our sins and save us. Doesn’t this all sound like a children’s fairy tale?
Why did Adam sin in the first place? When God created him, He gave him “free will” and because of this “free will”, Adam made the decision to sin and was held responsible for his action. But wait a minute; We all know that different people handle temptation in different ways. When looking at a beautiful woman, a young man with raging hormones is more likely to succumb to her advances than a less hormonal and more scholarly man who would examine the pros and cons of being with her. And if man was created gay, a beautiful woman presents little or no temptation for him.
If God is able to know all things and do all things, all he had to do was modify Adam’s “free will” so that he could not have succumbed to the temptation of the forbidden fruit. Why should God blame Adam for not listening to him, when he created him to act that way? It was not Adam’s fault that God did not give him enough willpower to resist the temptation He placed before him. “Original sin” is actually God’s fault. Consequently, we did not need to be “redeemed” and there was no reason for Christ to die. If Christ was God and suffered so brutally and died for some unnecessary reason, then the Christian God must be a masochist.
When he was in elementary school, he was an altar boy. One of the sentences we would say was to beat our hearts three times and say the words “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”, which when translated mean “Because of me, because of me, because of my most serious fault.” “So I was just an innocent child, what could have done that was considered a gross misdemeanor? Is it because God is like a ‘corporate alien’ manager who always blames his mistakes on his employees? He made a faulty creation and blamed his creation for the failure None of this seems to make sense.
The Church itself was another reason why I was expelled from Christianity. One of the most important spokespersons for Christianity is the Catholic Church. This is the organization that, at the time of the Inquisition, burned scientists at the stake even when they were later shown to be right. This is the organization that Hitler admired in his book “Mein Kampf”. This is the organization where the American bishops covered up the actions of priests who abuse children. Why would the true God want to be associated with such a group? In fact, many of the world’s religions that claim to know so much about God are actually so imperfect in their dealings with man. How could they be representatives of God?
I think people believe in irrational religious ideas just because they see their churches as insurance policies for the afterlife. They do not want to risk going to hell, and their priests use religious rules and “faith” to guarantee a pleasant life after death.
Although I don’t believe that Christ was God, I certainly admire his role as one of the greatest philosophers in history. Christ questioned the Jewish religious establishment of his time. In fact, he criticized the sadistic God of the Old Testament and preached the love and tolerance of all, and that could have given the religious leaders of the time reason enough to crucify him. Believing he was married to Mary Magdalene, as “The Da Vinci Code” suggests, does not alter his philosophy. If anything, being married and raising a family would have given him a better insight into the minds of most of his followers.
I think the main effect of the “The Da Vinci Code” phenomenon is to show us how intolerant some religious organizations are. They label the book and the movie “heresy.” They boycott cinemas. They forbid their followers to read the book or watch the movie. This type of intolerance of religious groups extends to other areas as well. Why else can’t Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds coexist peacefully in Iraq? Why can’t Jews and Palestinians live together in their territories?
When a religion tries to tell you that you cannot read a book or watch a movie, it is really insulting your intelligence. If you are really comfortable with your faith, someone else’s beliefs will not affect you in any way. If you start to question your beliefs, it may be because they are not right for you in the first place.
Leonardo Da Vinci, being a great scholar and scientist, probably hated the policies of the Catholic Church during his time. He could have had access to forbidden scriptures but was unable to speak. His way of expressing such dangerous ideas could have been by placing hidden messages in his paintings. Unless more of his works are discovered, I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.
