The DaVinci Code movie opened this weekend...

... to raspberries from the critics and boos from the religious right.

Being more of a religious left type and not much of a movie critic, I want to see it.

I never bothered with the book because I heard it was bad. I had hoped this would be a rare case of the movie being better than the book.

I guess not.

What gets me is the uproar over the book and the movie. Some seem to take both as personal attacks on their religious beliefs. Never mind that it's a novel! Dan Brown never claimed that he was writing history, theology, philosophy or anything other than cheap entertainment. As my pastor said this morning, "If you don't get upset about a Superman movie, why get upset about 'Code'? It's fiction!"

Something similar happened over a half century ago with the the publication of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ - although that book was much more a serious literary work than 'Code'. It also happened almost twenty years ago with the release of Scorsese's movie version of 'Temptation'. I remember the uproar and the protests which, of course, made me want to see the movie. I liked it. I thought it raised some interesting points and, where I disagreed, it only made my beliefs stronger. In the years that have passed since the furor over the Last Temptation movie, many conservative Christians have come to agree.
Maybe in twenty years time, some will have reconsidered DaVinci Code as well.

God loves you.