I’ve been asked to be interviewed by Lee Strobel for a Zondervan response to the upcoming movie, The DaVinci Code (I really don’t know the name of the movie). Many of you know I’m not a fan of novels and fiction writers, and so I didn’t want to read that book but I was asked to speak about it so I read it some time ago. What an easy read, and Dan Brown (the author) managed to set me up every chapter to want to read the next chapter.
When I speak about it, what I want to probe the most is not what most people want to probe. Most Christians want to know if the book is “true,” which it is not — nor is it even that good of history. All kinds of scholars wrote books that said that.
What I want to know is this: Why did so many people want to believe this story? Why did so many wonder if maybe the Church has duped the entire Church for 2000 years? Why did so many wonder if maybe the Church buried other versions of Jesus? Why did so many wonder if the Church suppressed the truth all along? Why did so many want to believe that the Church was an ideological power that was threatened by alternative stories?
This is really only one question — why did so many seem to think this version of the Christian faith was believable? — and it is for me the central and only genuinely abiding question that this book provokes.
Got any thoughts about that question?