Believers need to Prepare for Da Vinci Code Fallout
Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:45:48 -0400
By Allie Martin
April 21, 2006
(AgapePress) – An upcoming movie based on a best-selling book that questions Christ’s divinity can be challenged with fact and reason, says a Christian author. James Garlow advises Christians to be prepared to refute untruths that will be conveyed in Sony Pictures’ The Da Vinci Code.
The movie, due to be released in the U.S. on May 19, is directed by Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks. The film is based on the best-selling by Dan Brown, which asserts that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children, and questions the divinity of Christ. The movie is rated PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, nudity, thematic material, brief drug references, and sexual content.
James Garlow is co-author of Cracking Da Vinci’s Code, and he also compiled The Da Vinci Code Breaker. Garlow says Christians have an opportunity to counter the lies in Brown’s novel with the historical truths found in scripture. He is convinced the Church must take seriously the challenge posed by the film.
“It’ll either be catastrophic for the Church in terms of the unbelieving public losing a great deal of whatever confidence they may have left in the scriptures or in the person of Jesus,” he says, “or if the Church is ready — if we’re able, as Peter writes, to give an answer for the hope that lies within us — we can seize this opportunity and have fabulous evangelistic fruit … or what I call pre-evangelism.”
Christians, says the California pastor, must be willing and equipped to answer questions that will arise in the minds of non-believers about the reliability of the New Testament.
“If a person equips themselves on how to refute [the lies], they can just simply [say], ‘Here, look at this information,'” he suggests, “and they can help a person establish a strong faith and even a sufficiently strong understanding of the historicity of the gospels, the historicity of Jesus and his life, even church history itself enough so that they can refute Dan Brown’s notions.”
Garlow’s The Da Vinci Code Breaker is a sort of dictionary that contains numerous terms and facts about the people, places, and events referenced in the novel. One group — Opus Dei, a conservative Roman Catholic group — is depicted in the book as a murderous, power-hungry sect. The group has requested that Sony Pictures include a clarifying disclaimer in the film, saying “would be a gesture of respect toward the figure of Jesus, to the history of the Church and to the religious beliefs of viewers.”
In its response, Sony does not say if a disclaimer will be attached, but insists that the film is “a work of fiction” and “not a religious tract.”