Tuesday, January 10, 2012

2012




In 2003, Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" was released to the public and by 2009 it had already sold over 80 million copies worldwide and been adapted to a major motion picture. It's the story of Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who studying symbols, and a cryptographer named Sophie Nevue of the Paris police department. Robert is supposed to be in Paris on business and ends up getting roped into helping a murder investigation which ends up spiralling them into all sorts of fanciful adventures involving an alternative history of the Christian Church. Dan Brown's ideas were partially inspired by real historical events and partially by conspiracy theories such as Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene, and so-called secret societies like Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion

Aside from the enjoyment of a mystery-detective novel, what the popularity of the book revealed is that many people have a fascination with the possibility of conspiracies in church history, and that not many people know anything about church history in the first place. The main problem, of course, is the use of factual events with a predominantly fabricated history. If you didn't already know better, there was no way to distinguish what was real and what wasn't. Seeking to fill that void in understanding there are many historians who wrote up detailed rejoinders for the book's numerous inaccuracies.

In just this past year, 2011, Rob Bell's book "Love Wins" quickly rose to the top of the best-seller list, clearly striking a chord with a culture that wants to know about Heaven, Hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived. The blogosphere furiously erupted, giving the book far more publicity than Harper Collins could've hoped for. The book drew vast criticisms against Bell, charging him with the label of a bona-fide universalist. More than that, however, it revealed that many people, believing Christians included, often knew little about the historic doctrines of Heaven and Hell.

Many Christians have denounced these books as heretical, but by virtue of the controversies surrounding them it helped bring a renewed interest in important issues that many people had little or no previous understanding. In fact, many of the questions that were brought up by these books may not have been asked or been taken seriously before by our contemporaries.

Obviously each generation has its particular controversies, and faithful Christian leaders have done well to help answer those questions biblically. In our day we see our countries go to war with questionable justification, we see radical changes in definition of marriage, the prevalence of abortions and even doctor-assisted suicides. We see the growing challenges of maintaining liberty among diverse cultures, an ever-increasing gap between the richest and the poorest, and a world which seems to be moving faster every day. But as the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, "What has been will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9). History can teach us many lessons, but we cannot begin to come to grips with these issues without first engaging them.

And that brings us to the theme of my blog for 2012. My aim is not to bring up controversy for the sake of seeking attention, but to provoke serious thought about important issues. To do that this year I will be introducing to you to some personal friends and family members with discussions about some interesting and possibly very personal topics. Some of them hold views that are contrary to my own, but by engaging in dialogue I hope that we will ask the sort of questions that will garner a deeper, richer understanding of God's grace and wisdom in all things.

Join in the conversation, and check back soon for the first dialogues.