DaVinci versus Jesus???

Okay, so I didn’t plan to post today. I thought to leave you with my ugly photos all weekend. But I went to the doctor a few hours ago (those annoying annual checkups that we women endure at the hands of the all knowing medical field/scientific community), and when I left this van was in the parking lot.

Now, I don’t normally take pictures of cars in parking lots, but this van was so hard for me to believe that I was afraid if I didn’t snap a quick shot, no one else would believe it either.

And speaking of belief…

Okay, so I’m not what anyone would consider religious, although at other times in my life I tried on a few different ones for size. None really fit. But what exactly is going on behind those doors every Sunday? I mean, this person went out and spent money to have this sign made for and applied to his/her car. Is there some belief war that I didn’t know about? Is it Jesus versus Dan Brown? Or worse, Jesus versus DaVinci? Is our taste in fiction now really sending us to hell?

What is going on?

I mean, okay, I read (and to some degree, enjoyed) The DaVinci Code.

****SPOILER ALERT*** (if you don’t know and don’t want to know, skip this paragraph). So, my understanding and memory (it has been a while and I haven’t seen the movie) of the story is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children, that she was part of the divinity, and that the Church rooted out, covered up, and destroyed all knowledge of that piece of the religion: a sacred feminine, and love and sex as a base of the divine. She is the Holy Grail that has been lost.

Now, let’s just say, FOR A MOMENT, that this STORY is some argument that we are supposed to believe rather than just the work of FICTION that it I thought it was. What is Brown really saying here? It is true that Western culture has suppressed the feminine (divine or otherwise) for at least two thousand years. Many feminists trace the "flight from the feminine" back to Plato and his allegory of the cave (which might be thought of as a metaphor for the womb) where men had to abandon the cave to find Truth (See Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman). Still others point out that Descartes' theory of mind over body connects women to the body and suggests that through reason and rationale thinking that body can be overcome (see Susan Bordo's Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesian Culture). In any case, Christianity has been a large part of that culture that has abandoned and oppressed women. So, perhaps there is a bit of wisdom in the Brown's story.

But it is a novel, not a sacred text. I mean, are there groups of people now building temples to Magdalene? Not that that is a horrible idea, but is this really something Christians should worry themselves over? So, why the sticker on this car?

What is so threatening to Christianity about a sacred feminine? The reaction leaves me contemplating the possibility that Dan Brown has actually struck some deep chord within us (or at least within some crazed Christians).

Is it a positive sign that the church is having to jump into defense? I mean, when I really think about what this sticker says, it seems to suggest that there is a choice in our beliefs, that the Bible may not actually have all the answers.

Am I wrong to see some strange illumination here?