the saga continues
DISCLAIMER: I want to acknowledge at the beginning of this post, that this post is very forthright, and truly may be offensive to some. I do not write claiming perfection in all that I do. Enjoy.
I often will stay up late on Sunday nights, writing, reading, or watching televangelists (you have no idea how hard it is to admit that I watch televangelists). So it was Sunday, I was between channel 19 and 21 watching the big-hair-gold brigade do their thing. I then flipped over to ESPN 2 to check on the French Open coverage, when on my way I saw another televangelist talking about that ever popular book The Da Vinci Code. I smiled really big for two reasons:
1. I thought to myself, “This guy is really, really mad.”
2. I was friends with the guy’s son when I was in high school.
He was waving his arms frantically, and kept using words like, “deception” “heresy” and “lies.” At one point I think he got confused because he mentioned something about the Death Star. I sat watching him and for a moment was chuckling to myself. Somewhere on this earth I realized that J.K. Rowling is finally at peace because the cross-hairs of the Hyper-Fundamentalists are, for a time, off Harry Potter.
He was still going. He would yell, flail his arms bearing a gold watch, a ring with bling, and gold cuff links the size of dinner plates … then it would fade to a Power Point slide with The Da Vinci Deception written across the top. He would yell while the slide was up, then it would cross fade back to his jet black hair, gold rimmed glasses, and tanned face burning with anger. It was really unbelievable. What was more unbelievable was that I was watching all of this at 12.10 AM, and more than that is I had met this guy several times. I kept thinking I was on Punkt.
The longer he yelled the more I heard that was factually incorrect. Then I started to wonder what he was even talking about. He began yelling about Leonardo and his paintings. Besides calling his famous work, The Last Supper he got absolutely nothing else right. Then he implicated Leonardo as being a bad seed because he through his paintings led people “astray.” He then started yelling about art in general. He began naming names of people that I had never heard of that supposedly work in the modern art world. I began to get nervous that at some point in his rant he would yell my name … I mean I actually do know this guy.
Then came the apex of his “Stalinesque” speech. He slowly raised a copy of The Da Vinci Code yelling the whole time. He gave all of the statistics about the book. How many copies it sold, how many people have read in how many languages, in how many countries, and how many more would see the movie ... it was not only a gripping climax it was rather informative one too. Then he raised his Bible, a really big leather one with (and you will never believe this) gold edged pages. He then gave all sorts of statistics about this book too … again it was rather informative.
Then he asked a question that forced the audience in front of him, the television audience, his colleagues on the platform, (and now you who read my blog) to wrestle in their own minds. He said, “What are you going to build your life on? A book that is two years old written by a pagan? Or a book that is 2,000 years old written by God?” Then he yelled (think Howard Dean presidential primaries) saying, “I know what my choice is …!” And with that he leaned back, cocked his wrist, lurched forward and threw The Da Vinci Code up in the air … it twirled, pages flapping, cover jacket coming off until in landed on the ground.
The place erupted like he had just scored the game winning goal in the final minutes of a tied game against a loathed rival.
At that point I stopped laughing. I thought about how mortified I was for my friend whose Dad just erupted on national television to the delight of a riled crowd. Then I wondered how many people were sitting on their couches watching this as well. Then I speculated that many of them may not be followers of Jesus. And then I thought, “And after seeing this, if you didn’t know Jesus why would you want to follow him now?”
I wondered how would Dan Brown feel ... I mean really would he take this guy seriously? Those who follow Jesus must respect men and women no matter who they are ... if nothing else we must repsect them as those made in the image of God. Can we just stop doing stuff like this? Yelling and name calling will get us no where.
So to you, my friends Dad, I simply ask this, "Pleas stop making my job, and the job of my brothers and sisters as Christians more difficult than it already is."