God & The Da Vinci Code

...from Saturday Message With the Rev. Kevin Logan, Vicar of Christ Church Accrington.

"What do you make of this?" asked neighbour Carl, passing me his copy of Dan Brown's
Da Vinci Code.
Two enjoyable weeks later I told him that it was a harmless thriller that wove proven historical inaccuracies together to make up a cracking good read.
"But it says Jesus wasn't God, that he had kids with Mary Magdalene and that all we've been taught about him for the last two thousand years is false," countered Carl.
"Brown's a novelist," I answered. "He's got a living to make and to do that he's got to find or invent interesting fiction."
"But," countered Carl, "what if he's right?"
"Then every reputable scholar and historian for the last 2,000 years has been not only wrong but has deliberately covered things up.
"Not only that, the men and women of two millennia who we believed to be good were down-right evil, including all the popes and archbishops, and especially the writers of our civilisation-shaping best-selling Bible.
"And, finally, Carl, there's no evidence to back up Brown whereas there are libraries full of proof for Christianity."
"Still," sighs Carl, "makes you think, doesn't it?"

Thirty million have read the Da Vinci Code. In six days Columbia's £125million film version hits the screen? How many more Carls will there be? I wonder.

When men stop believing in God and his book and his people they start to believe anything.