Da Vinci Code, defense mode

"CRACKING THE DAVINCI CODE," read the sign in front of the church.

From the placard's maroon coloring and font mirroring the cover of Dan Brown's giga-selling novel, one might guess that copies were available in the vicarage. Not likely, however. Not since the Muslims invaded Jerusalem has there been a threat of this magnitude towards Christianity.

Sound a bit hyperbolic? Perhaps, but the church's visible, organized campaign against The Da Vinci Code speaks to a very genuine fear coming from the Christian establishment. The closer one gets to right-wing Catholic set, the louder the alarm hums. If The Church was not worried about this book, they would wave it off as the blathering of a very imaginative writer. But that's not what they have done.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and a potential successor to the Pope, has publicly denounced the book, unleashing a prolonged attack on the narrative. Christian churches everywhere are preparing their parishioners for the release of the movie this Friday (by the way, has Tome Hanks had some "work done?" His face looks a little squiggly to me).

This seems natural enough. The book has sold a staggering 40 million copies plus worldwide, making it one of the best selling novels of all time, and its contents differ sharply with what we have come to know as acceptable truths about Christianity. Wait - did you catch that word NOVEL? That means it is what Dan Brown has always claimed it to be - a work of fiction. But nonetheless, it contains historical accuracy sprinkled throughout, which makes it dangerous. Some people who have never thought about the controversies raised in the book now think they know everything.

Of course, this is hardly a new concept. Most any novel on the shelves of your local bookstore will contain a certain amount of truth in its premise, in order to assist with the reader's suspension of disbelief and the rest of the contents. Some readers then think they are experts in said subject matter. The Da Vinci Code and its fans are no different in this aspect.

So why is there such uproar from the Catholic establishment? There are a few reasons.

On the page prior to the prologue, Brown states, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." What he did not say was, "All theories, assertions and allegedly uncovered secrets are actually true." But, that undoubtedly is what a significant percentage of readers took it to mean. And that's where The Church is getting royally freaked out.

Millions of people believe everything in the book, or at least want to believe it. And that presents a real threat to Christianity.

The Church and their followers would have you believe that The Da Vinci Code is nothing more than absolute slop, and if you believed a word of it, you are either a moron or you have been duped Satan's clever use of the written word. Because The Church itself doesn't have any ideas that seem far-fetched either, right?

Oh well, there a couple. First, some lady got pregnant, even though she never had sex with anyone. Then, she gave birth to a son, whose dad is God. God Jr. died a little over three decades later, only to become resurrected after a few days. And if you don't follow his teachings 100 percent to the core, you are going into a fiery, blistering cauldron of damnation … FOR ETERNITY.

But suppose you never heard of this Jesus fellow? Suppose you lived in India, born into a caste system with no possibility of doing anything other than cleaning sewers for your entire life, with no access to information. You've been a good father and great husband and never did anything wrong. No Christian missionary ever came to visit you and you never heard the name Jesus.

Guess what! You are going to Hell … FOR ETERNITY.

So let me get this straight - God creates us just to screw us over. He puts us on this earth, gives us all these instincts that make us do all sorts of crazy things, then he picks and chooses a select few who get to chill out in Heaven (with other people who are probably doing all sorts of things up there - being lazy cloud nine dwellers and such - that would have gotten us in to trouble down here on earth). The rest of the unfortunate folks exist in some sort of lava cave with a red hot pitch fork up their ass … FOR ETERNITY.

Gee. God sounds like an asshole, doesn't he? Personally, I do believe in God, and the God of my understanding didn't create me just to knock me down.

The God of the hardcore church sounds quite similar to a few other spiritual giants with which you may be familiar. For instance; L. Ron Hubbard believes that his chosen few - you know, those nut jobs that have given every penny they've ever earned over to the cult he started - are the only ones that will get to go to Heaven. And when I say Heaven, I mean a spaceship. Yes, that really is what Scientology teaches its followers.

Louis Farrakhan preaches that Elijah Muhammad's spaceship is orbiting just a parsec or two from earth, waiting to take his loyal followers away when the time comes. What is it with these guys and spaceships anyway? Although, I have to admit that a spaceship whisking away earth's best and brightest (via tractor beam, ostensibly) seems at least as plausible as forever getting racked by some dude named Beelzebub.

The recurring theme is here is: if you're bad, go to Hell. If you're naughty, you'll get no presents. It's a threat-of-punishment system, and if the current state of things in the world is any indication, it hasn't worked too well.

Here lies the best aspect of Dan Brown's novel; the idea of matronly nourishment versus patronized punishment. Many other potions of the book, such as Mary Magdalene being Jesus' wife, them giving birth the daughter … who's to say if it's true or not? Those ideas have been floating around for a while now - Brown just made them accessible and popular. (On a side note: those who attack The Da Vinci Code seem to want to have it both ways. Dan Brown is both an idiot who made up a bunch of stuff out of thin air, and he's a plagiarizer who stole other people's established ideas.)

There have been countless scientific studies regarding the benefits of negative reinforcement versus positive reinforcement. And they all pretty much say the same thing; positive reinforcement works better. It's more efficient way to learn, and it produces better results.

For at least the last 2000 years, this planet has been under a male-dominated, punishing ideal. I'll kick your ass if you do me wrong. The idea of spending eternity in Hell is just the logical progression of that type of thinking. People do inexplicably bad things, and the only way we can reconcile ourselves to a basic idea of fairness is to believe that those worst offenders - the rapists, the murderers, the destroyers - are going to be punished in the afterlife.

The father is typically the punishing parent, and the mother is the nurturing, loving parent. To complete the allegory, the Catholic Church is like the father, with males dominating the hierarchy. It's not so much as they are anti-love, anti-female, it's just that it is not in their makeup to be loving and nurturing, not in their realm of understanding. Thus The Church tends to use the threat of punishment and fear to try and get its followers to adhere to the principals that are good for them

Don't get me wrong - The Church is not all bad. Staying away from the seven deadly sins is a really good idea, from a practical standpoint. Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and laziness can all lead to behavior which reasonable people can agree is evil. But in order to get its followers to act in a manner which fosters good relations, the church uses the less-effective method of punishing wrongdoers.

In the acknowledgments section of the book, Dan Brown offers thanks to his editor, in part for "truly understanding what this book is all about." He doesn't say what it is, in fact, all about. But my guess would be that it's about bringing back the feminine, nurturing aspects of spirituality to the forefront. The sacred feminine, as he repeatedly calls it.

Ultimately, this is of what The Church is truly afraid. The idea that women are inherently evil, that men need to run things and women are not worthy, is severely challenged in The Da Vinci Code. And it's about time.

I say let's let women run everything. Countries, companies, households, you name it - there would be a lot more peace and love in the world, and we could all use a little more of that. Us guys will just hang out, play sports and come up with ideas. If you need something heavy-lifted or your car parallel parked, we're there.

I think Da Vinci would love that.

Evan Redmon is a freelance writer and editor. He has lived in Washington, DC for most of his life, with seven years of college down the drain in Madison, WI and four and a half years of doing nothing in particular in Boulder, CO. He has visited 39 of the 50 states in the Union (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and can be reached at evanredmon@yahoo.com.