Is the ‘Code’ theory cracked?

Dan Brown’s controversial book “The Da Vinci Code” is back in the news as the film version is set to be released in May. A lawsuit alleges that Brown stole the ideas from early books. Are there deeper ? and perhaps useful ? lessons to be learned from interpretations of holy texts and stories that depart greatly from traditional ways of reading them?

Brendan Behan, the Irish writer, said, “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.”

The Catholic Church, surveying the wreckage unleashed by publicity of priestly criminality, would not agree. In addition to the revulsion such immorality awakens, this scandal is a public relations disaster of unprecedented proportion.

By contrast, the church should consider “The Da Vinci Code” ? the novelistic equivalent of Orson Welles’ alien invaders landing in Grovers Mill ? as hardly more than a fly to be swatted, if not ignored. After all, isn’t it stocked in the fiction section of your local bookstore?

The author attempts to baptize his hocus-pocus as fact, but it remains a rehashed mishmash of long discredited lunatic theories. Many before him have proposed that the church engages in cover-ups, and Brown will not be the last. One cannot revoke artistic license. “The Da Vinci Code” hardly qualifies as Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in threatening Catholicism.

Those who believe that Gandalf and Middle Earth in fact exist will be impressed by Brown’s scholarship.

The free publicity garnered by the church’s counter-productive resistance to the book only swells the author’s bank account. The church has survived more formidable onslaughts and weathered more sustained critiques than mystery books that concoct revelations of buried “secrets.” Such esoterica, pseudo-knowledge and conspiracy theories appeal to some, but few will succumb to their off-the-wall, over-the-top blandishments.

“The Da Vinci Code” is hardly an incendiary force equipped to overturn two millennia of conviction and devotion, and this transparently absurd pulp thriller will not seduce believers from their adoration of the Christ. This tissue of phantasmagoric speculation, completely bereft sustaining evidence, will hardly induce a crisis of faith.

I recall the tempest that swirled around “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which once roused great sensation. Where is its power to provoke today? “The Da Vinci Code” awaits the same fate. Long after this caricature is out of print and its author forgotten, religious texts will be studied and their messages lived. Its shelf life is numbered. “The Da Vinci Code” is not “inDavincible.” One has to suspend disbelief to make it through “The Da Vinci Code.” One has to open oneself up to belief to read the Bible. Which will prevail?

Is this novel bad publicity for the church and religion in general? Oh, please. On the copyright page is the disclaimer: “All the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” What more need be known? Will we think that Tom Hanks is really Robert Langdon and that Robert Langdon is really a Harvard symbologist?

For all the ballyhoo, “The Da Vinci Code” remains a meteor, evoking oohs and aahs, but here today and gone tomorrow. Compared to the steady star of religious faith and the staying power of abiding belief, it is a blip on the screen, not to be registered on the theological Richter scale.

Now, let’s talk about truth. I recently spied Elvis ?

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

What a wonderful question. I am a student of humanity and its relationship with God. I am interested in how each group, culture, tribe, individual, and institution forms their relationship with whatever they call God. Each experience reveals a new dimension of the primordial nature of creation. Each speaks to humanity about the fundamentals of a spiritual life.

Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist, was noted for saying that people weren’t looking for the meaning of life as much as they were looking for the experience of being alive. It is this spiritual experience that people seek in order to dismiss their fears and strengthen their faith ? having confidence in something that knows them, loves them, and will always be there for them.

It really doesn’t matter which religion you choose. Almost all religions offer an experience and an interpretation which usually explains how to live, how to cope, how to serve and how to relate to God. The great monad of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all come from the same root story of Abraham. Eastern philosophies come from spiritual traditions that inquire into an amazingly complex system of deities. They all address what I call the human disconnectedness that plagues every person lost in a sea of confusion and fear seeking a way to believe and live. This is why I encourage people to find the belief system that resonates with them and learn how to use it to create a peaceful life.

The question about art versus entertainment is similar to the question of what opens your heart and makes you receptive to a new idea which can bring you peace of mind as opposed to what captures your imagination and holds you in a prison of fear and condemnation. Most people receive their moral and ethical instruction from movies, music, TV and news, not religion. Most mass media are written to sensationalize and trivialize what each of us wants: a peaceful, healthy, and loving life.

Each of us, regardless of our religion, is a gift from God created with love in mind. If you want peace, read the writings that motivate you to live in peace, grace, forgiveness, and joy. Commit to live each day in peace and let every reaction you have be motivated by a desire for goodness.

SENIOR PASTOR JAMES TURRELL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

Costa Mesa

Yes! When Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” was first published, Umberto Eco, author of “Foucault’s Pendulum”, appeared on a TV network’s evaluation of Brown’s novel. Eco led the cameras into his home’s library, which was so huge that it reminded me of the Bancroft collections at UC Berkeley. Eco went to a section he called “books with delightful and provocative, but unprovable, theories” and said that is where he would put “The ? Code.” That reminded me that we readers must separate fact from fiction and put our brains in gear before putting our eyes to the page.

This takes time. It took me three hours to read Brown’s book and more than a month to digest Eco’s “Pendulum,” which also treats the Knights Templar, mysterious puzzles, historical conundrums and quirky characters.

Who would let a lifetime of praying to God in Christ and thinking about Jesus and biblical personages like Magdalene be radically affected by a three-hour novel read?

Eco called Brown’s theory “delightful” and I find it so. As a husband and dad, I would love to believe that Jesus knew the joys and challenges of an intimate male-female relationship. As a thoughtful Christian, I seriously doubt it could be true.

At various times in my life I have thought and believed Jesus to be “the Christ, the Messiah” as Peter testified; “my Lord and my God, as Thomas witnessed; the “King of the Jews” as Pilate mocked him; “Rabbi” as Mary Magdalene called him; savior, source of life, teacher, servant, liberator, redeemer, friend, companion, beloved ? and Jesus is all of this, and much more.

Even after reading Nikos Kazantzakis’ great novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” and seeing Martin Scorcese’s fine film based on it, I have been unable to think of Jesus as “a husband and father like me.” This remained true after reading Brown’s book and I fully expect no change if I see Ron Howard’s movie based on Brown’s fiction. Although I might dearly desire Jesus to be “a husband and father like me” there is no way of knowing if he was.

Still, my faith assures me that Jesus, God in Christ, fully understands my joys and challenges.

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

Media and advertisers create the impression that you are “left out” if you don’t see the latest movie or read the current controversial book. There are only so many books I will be able to read in the years given me, and “The Da Vinci Code” isn’t on my list. But fiction, music and visual art inspired by religion are often worthwhile.

Each person in every generation is responsible for interpreting and expressing a religious tradition if it is to be truly meaningful. Sometimes people imagine a religious tradition to be like a time capsule cemented into a corner stone holding holy texts with pure doctrine uninfluenced by the people, time and culture reading them ? or the people who wrote them. The process of reading, meditating, learning and integrating must be genuine and personal if religion is to come alive, however much or little it is guided by the tradition.

I recall the splash that the musicals “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell” made 40 years ago. From Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” to Tom Robbins’ “Another Roadside Attraction,” the Christian message has provided inspiration for artists throughout the ages. Those who consider themselves to be authorities in a tradition or guardians of orthodoxy usually comment publicly and within their congregations if there is controversy.

The depiction of a female body on the cross at St. John the Divine in New York City in the 1960s shocked people. This visual re-telling of the crucifixion challenged viewers to see how a too-literal emphasis upon the maleness of Jesus may have limited their understanding of the universal human message which is beyond differences of gender or race.

Zen is distinguished by its emphasis upon no reliance on texts. But classical sutras as well as contemporary writings are regarded as a finger pointing to the moon. Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” is a helpful “finger” in its wonderful re-telling of the story of the Buddha. Hesse writes: “Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge of one who is no longer confronted with the conflict of desires, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.”

Another noteworthy contemporary expression of Buddhism is Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums.” The main character jumps freight trains, works in the Sierra Mountains on a fire lookout tower, and considers himself an old-time Bikkhu (monk) in modern clothes wandering the world.

In “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig observes: “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself.”

Since “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was first published, more than 150 “Zen and the Art of ? “ books have appeared. Most of them reduce Zen to a set of strategies or approaches which can be easily applied to a game or sport or hobby for the reader’s benefit. But the actual practice of waking up to each moment and seeing what interferes with this is a spiritual path. This is “Zen and the Art of Zen.”

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

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