I saw on the news last night a small (small!) group of Christians protesting outside of a movie theater's showing of The Da Vinci Code. Because, you know, Jesus was all about boycotts and protests.
If you're going to protest Hollywood, at least be consistent and protest outside Blockbuster Video, which rents insideous DVD's with foul treatments that mock aspects of Christianity such as the Indiana Jones movies, the Star Wars trilogy, and the Matrix films (better yet, just protest how the Wachowski brothers butchered the latter films!).
Where am I going with this? If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, then you are a participant in the missio Dei (mission of God). That mission? To seek and save the lost (Luke 19.10). How? Share the eternal truths of the historic, orthodox faith (Jude 3) in ways that people living in our culture will understand (1 Cor. 9).
In other words, we're to contend for the faith and contextualize the message. That's what it means to be missional - to see yourself as a missionary to your culture that speaks a different language, dresses a different way, holds different values, etc. We must be students of the culture we're in so that we can present Jesus in ways people will understand.
Part of this means doing our homework. Da Vinci Code is our homework right now. It's modern-day Gnosticism repackaged for American consumption. Gnosticism has been around since the beginnings of Christianity claiming that there are hidden truths. This is why a large chunk of the New Testament is written specifically against gnostic heresies (Ephesians, 1 & 2 Timothy, 1, 2, & 3 John, etc.). The world is not going to end because of Da Vinci Code (but the same can't be said about the sight of Tom Hanks' new haircut). In fact, this movie can easily help you start a missional conversation with someone.
At the risk of coming off as a modernist in postmodernist's clothing, here's an example:
You go see the movie this weekend. You go to work on Monday morning with a missional-mindset, looking for opportunities to invest in someone and invite them to, say, Catalyst.
At lunch time someone is talking about their weekend exploits, you chime in saying you saw Da Vinci Code. A conversation strikes up, and you happen to mention that your pastor encouraged you to go see it. With all the hoopla in the press, your new friend is surprised - a Christian leader's endorsement? You explain to them that you enjoy good fiction and that a big chunk of the Bible is written specifically about the issues Dan Brown writes about. Your new friend asks what kind of church you go to...
Get it? Now be missional & go see or read The Da Vinci Code. And push past the protestors at Blockbuster to rent Raiders of the Lost Ark for kicks.
Unfortunately for DVC fans... the movie didn't really show itself off very well.
So the water cooler talk will likely not be about the themes presented in the film but on how poor some of the performances were.
It's got to be hard to write a movie using a book that 60+ million people have read. Everyone is a critic!
Posted by: adam | Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 09:31 AM