Does the Da Vince Code undermine Christianity? Can it really? Maybe the problem is that Christians undermine Christianity. Are we afraid that an author has inspired people, awaking the sleeping giant within that fears the Church? Is there reason for the Church to be feared?

Certainly it is to be feared. For centuries Christians have been a walking chaos. We are human, fallen into selfishness, pride, nationalism, religionism and wield quite the tempers. Christianity no longer has the authority that it had cherished for so long and Christians do not know what to do about it. Has God been defamed? If your answer to that is "yes" I think your view of God is really miniscule and you align yourself with Nitzche more than you like as we would then have the power to "kill God". I for one do not think we are undermining God and the Da Vince Code does not undermine God or God's people either.

God's people need not feel the pressure of undermining because we need not be prideful about our religionism. If God truly is our source of joy, hope, power and authority, then why do we let a little book, written well enough to catch people's attention ruffle us into thinking God is greatly injured. No it is not God, but his people, but God is the divine Healer correct. So why worry?

Instead of viewing the Da Vince Code as anti-evangelism, stripping people of their faiths, why don't we produce better things that bolster peoples' faiths? For so long the Church has been seen as unwilling to dialogue. That may have worked for a time, but now the Church does not have the silent authority. People are going to ask questions of it and since it was a powerhouse for so long in history, the Church will suffer twice as much ridicule and scrutiny.

But that is ok. I believe we have been forewarned in our own scriptures of this scrutiny and we need not fear. Instead of reviling against somebody, why not engage the author intellectually in dialogue rather than debate. Why not allow for good creativity to come from the Evangelical world - from music, to art, to penmanship.

Maybe instead of worrying about anti-evangelism, we need to really evangelize. We need to go hit our communities and build the relational trust that the community needs. A guest speaker in my conflict transformation class last night is writing his dissertation about conflict between races in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. His contention is that the missing Peace (Piece) is the Church.

Where has the Church gone? Why has it run from God's mission? Because we are spending so much time fighting the Da Vince Code. The Church is full of fist-shakers and loud voices, but that is certainly not the picture of the salvific Jesus. To be sure, he rebukes wrong doing, but he does so after treating women with respect; drawing in the sand and thus rescuing a prostitute from death; pulling a small, slimy man out of a tree and dining with him.

Church members, me included, we need not let fear of anti-evangelism worry us if we are truly evangelizing. True evangelism is highly political and highly bi, tri or multi-partisan. Evangelism is to announce the kingdom of God that is here now and yet to come. The elected leader created the kingdom and is in no position to lose the seat on the throne. It is the constituents that need to be won and the grass-roots campaign that God has embarked on does not include fighting exceptional books; it includes loving the people around you and producing expression with the quality that God has blessed artists with.

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