Sooner or later,

it all comes down to C.S. Lewis.

And in Mere Christianity, there's a passage that speaks directly to the controversy around The DaVinci Code's claims that Christ was human and not divine.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Full commitment

Via the Crunchy Con blog is this wonderful refutation of those who would claim the DaVinci Code has revealed some ancient truth that overturns the Gospel of Christ.

"From the very beginnings of the Church the faithful were tortured and put to death because they believed the Gospel was true and because they refused to deny this truth, and the same witness has been given throughout the history of the Church up to and including the present day. Gnosticism, by contrast, never produced martyrs, and was somewhat embarrassed by its collaborationist tendency already in the time of Valerian. Today's Gnostics are no different. When someone assures you he thinks the The Da Vinci Code tells the real story of Jesus, ask him: 'Would you go to your death for the belief that Dan Brown has it right?' If he says no, the conclusion is obvious: 'Ah, I see. You weren't talking about truth. You meant to say that life would easier for you if the Catholic Church were wrong.'"

Reminds me of the story of a pig and chicken discussing what faith in action really meant. They passed by a restaurant offering a special on bacon eggs. "Look", said the pig, "this is what I'm talking about. Your contribution to that breakfast is a sacrifice. To me, it means total commitment!"

Sigh.

In the old days, the Church gave out salvation based on the amount of money they donated.

Now, we give out iPods to get them to come to church.

I give you: The Reverse Indulgence.

The Church of the State

Via the Crunchy Con blog (mmmn, granola) comes a fascinating and painful article on the "Protestant Deformation", a devastating analysis of what began as a good and righteous attempt to remove the barriers between God and Man has now become a political, rather than spiritual, movement.

"The Protestant Reformation was thus giving birth to what by the early 20th century would become the American Creed. The fundamental elements of that secular creed - liberal democracy, free markets, constitutionalism and the rule of law - were already fully in place in the United States in the early 19th century. This spread of the Protestant rejection of hierarchy and community from the arena of salvation to the arenas of economics and politics was driven by a particular inner dynamic, or rather decline, within the Protestant faith itself."

My old pastor once remarked after seeing a half-time show at the Alamo Bowl that stated the Conquistadores came to America for "Gold, Glory and God" that is was a shame that the eternal beauty of the Gospel of Christ was lumped in with two other things so temporal and crass. We have the wonderful, beautiful gift of a faith that crosses cultures with ease and is a beacon of light to all the world, yet we insist on wrapping it in the filthy rags of this world. May God be merciful on us for our failings.