Derek and Melissa’s Family

The da Vinci Code

by Derek—2005.11.29 @ 0909

My Rating: 1 out of 5

My free-time reading schedule, as of late, has been occupied by another reading challenge that must be completed by the end of the year, so Melissa and I decided to read a book together. We chose The da Vinci Code by Dan Brown on the recommendation of friends. We knew about several controversies surrounding the book before we started, but we thought it would be interesting to read none-the-less.

The story begins with a mysterious murder. The victim, struggling to stay alive as long as possible, manages to write an elaborate code on the floor, and on himself, as clues to an ancient conspiracy.

It is this so-called conspiracy, not the mystery/thriller story itself, that is the catalyst behind the books’ success. After only a few chapters, both Melissa and I wondered what all the fuss was about. The main character, Robert Langdon, is a “symbologist” who knows the answer to the “conspiracy” from the very beginning of the book and only seems to remember symbols’ meaning after a conspiquous “ah-ha” moment. To explain his version of what symbols mean, the character Langdon goes into flashbacks where he taught a class, gave a lecture, or presented to inmates. This technique of school lessons is so heavy-handed it gets tiresome, and Melissa and I felt insulted on more than one occasion when the author would give away revealing information and then tell you what you may have missed, ruining the imaginative “ah-ha” moments themselves.

Since the character Langdon knew the conspiracy throughout the entire book, the teaching moments became too didactic. The main thesis of the book is that all established religions are based on lies. For Christians, that lie is that Christ wasn’t divine; the early Christian church made that (and other so-called “doctrines”) up during the Council of Nicea around 300 A.D. Christ was married to Mary Magdeline and their posterity lives today. If this secret were revealed, it would mean the demise of the Christian faith as we now know it.

The author is quick to suggest an alternative “faith”—a truer religion—to supplant Christianity; a religion based on pagan ideals that were around long before any man-made religion like Christianity. The postulate is so heavy-handed and repeated over-and-over that we felt like the author was trying to beat it into our heads. As if the repeated statement somehow made it true.

The author made a statement in the beginning of his book that the description of ceremonies and other information in the book was true. Some of the author’s reasoning seems real enough, but many others were obvious fiction. I had to pull out my art history books to debunk a few of the author’s statements, and others were unmasked by searching information online.

I’ve read better mystery novels, and for both Melissa and I, the conspiracy story did not make it better. Overall, the book promotes a faithless, anti-Christian message while promoting secular reasoning, pagan worship, and science as the ideal foundation for society. The book’s message was pretty clear: people who believe in god, while misdirected, are doing good for society, but it would better if they really questioned their own religious history and know the truth about what they are believing in. Christ, while a great teacher and idealist, was nothing more than a man who did not perform “miracles” nor did he raise from the dead.

The author is skillful at making every-day symbols and historic icons seem to have different meanings by his continual use of reasoning, logic, and contemporary relationships. The book aptly points out how many symbols in our every-day use have pagan origins (in fact, according to the book, they all share the SAME origin—the “devine feminine” —how interesting…); however, the beauty of symbols is that they are constantly redefined. Almost every symbol can or does have negative, pagan, or distructive uses, but it does not follow that the symbols carry that meaning eternally. Groups often adopt common, every-day symbols and attach their own meaning as a way to mask, or encrypt, their own messages. The author seems to conclude that if a certain symbol once had a pagan use, it must follow that every time you see that symbol used in other settings, it must have that same use and meaning.

Most people have probably already read this book, and because of its fame, it hardly needs any recommendations, but Melissa and I cannot offer our own recommendation. The story is too weak and the conspiracy is too heavy-handed to really be enjoyed. Without the conspiracy, the book would fall. With the conspiracy, the book has achieved a cult status.

Comments

Post a comment