The Best press a movie ever got...
Churches employ reverse-reverse psychology to keep the faithful out of the theaters.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are campaigning to keep church goers from supporting the upcoming 'DaVinci Code' Movie. "The DaVinci Code" purports that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalen and had a child with her, the bloodline of which may still exist today. Although fictional, the book has raised questions in the minds of idiots who are willing to accept the word of a novel writer as true without exploring the facts themselves. Brown is most likely grateful for all of the extra press coverage of the upcoming movie which will cut the cost of advertising to a minimum. Will you see it? Should a christian see it?
posted by InterestingPhysics @ 4:03 PM
4 Comments:
note: Im not claiming that it would be a sin to see it. Nor am i advocating seeing it or not (at the moment). Sometimes in the interest of the advancement of the Kingdom, it is good to give up a freedom you have (i.e. the freedom to see whatever movie you want to).
I agree that it is certainly necessary for Christians to give up freedoms. We are free in Christ, but we are also slaves to Him. I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately, and my immediate, knee-jerk reaction was to say that Christians should not see the movie. However, the more I think about it the more I realize that it wouldn't be that big of a deal to see it. The thing is that it's so incredibly easy to debunk the incredibly stupid claims made in the book that I can't see it making even a small dent in a 2000 year old, tried and true philosophy. On the other hand, people in our rather lazy culture seem to love their conspiracy theories. They offer a maximum interest level at a minimum research level. This is an appealing concept to some. On the other hand those people would probably be swayed by any new idea that comes across their path. I don't know if Christians should see it, I know that I probably will not.
The book isn't really even that good. So the movie will probably be worse.
Actually I had a huge problem with Bruce Almighty and The Life of Brian did receive the same kind of hoo-ha.
The book suggesting that Jesus may have been married is a completely separate issue from him being divine. What the book says about his divinity is that it was not decided that he was divine until the council of Nicea and that the vote was close and Constantine was the deciding vote, none of which is true. The council of Nicea was called because some nobody named Arius was teaching that he wasn't divine. They came together, had a vote, and it was decided that what the church had always believed about Christ was true, that he was 100% God; and most likely Constantine died actually believing that Christ was not divine.
I don't know about Bruce Almighty, But life of brian was actually banned in some countries (i think even the US). I don't think the issue is about letting something challenge my faith so much. I bought the book, and I enjoyed it. It reads like an Indiana Jones kind of drama. I imagine that I would probably generaly enjoy the movie as long as it had the basic elements of a good movie. For me, questioning seeing the movie really comes more from Dan Brown's attitude and statements. Its clear from the things he says about the book in interviews that he really believes the early church was out to fool everyone. Now, i didn't know this when I bought the book. But in light of it, i ask myself, knowing that it won't make much of a difference, if I should abstain from further supporting Dan Brown.
On a related note, I own "Life of Brian" which is a thouroughly heretical comedy. I originally bought it because of the title as a present for an old friend (named brian-- duh). I own it now because I got is a while ago, but the exception i take with it, is that they never portray Jesus as anything but the Biblical one. Its a comedy aimed at pointing out some of the redicuous things that churches do today. Its not suggesting that the church willingly promotes a lie, but that devout followers can take things the wrong way and persecute those who don't do the same as them. In fact, the I listened to the director's commentary for the movie, and the movie's working title was going to be "Jesus Christ: lust for glory" (I don't know if they were joking or not) But they said that they read the gospels to find out more about it, they decided that it wasn't Jesus who was messed up, but his followers. (a distinction that Ghandi also made).
Anyway, my point is, that I'm going to give my opinion about this movie when asked, and otherwise, I probably won't talk about it so much (and ironic statment at the end of a giant comment-- at the end of a post that I made-- about the movie).
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