She answers, "Not at all, really."

Having found a pupil who freely admits her ignorance (and whose name, ironically, means "wisdom"), the fictional Teabing butchers Christianity. He declares the Bible "a product of man, my dear. Not of God." He announces that Jesus was a mortal man who never claimed to be the Son of God. Rather, the "underhanded political maneuvers" of the emperor Constantine and the Church some 300 years after Christ's death "turned Jesus into a deity."

Why would the Church and the Roman government conspire in this way? To solidify their own power. Why hasn't Sophie heard this before? Because church leaders through history have been involved in a giant cover-up.

So if Jesus isn't deity, who or what is? According to Teabing, "the sacred feminine and the goddess" - worship of which "posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church."

Amazingly, this gutting of Christianity, with Jesus Himself hailed as a primary spokesperson for goddess worship, is accomplished in less than 10 pages. Within another 10 pages, Sophie learns that Jesus' life mission was to marry Mary Magdalene and produce a child. Thus, the gospel according to Brown is that Jesus isn't God, but Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail.

How can millions of people be convinced or confused by blatant blasphemy downloaded onto a 20-page section in the middle of a fiction novel?

Anyone who's done any checking - even those without a vested interest in Christianity - recognize that Dan Brown has built his "exposé" on sophism, which WordNet defines as "a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone."

In response to the novel and subsequent movie, a slew of books have been written, exposing the exposé. Classes and simulcasts have skewered Brown for his glaring inaccuracies. This avalanche of retorts has helped some church-goers breathe easier. "Whew," we sigh. "What we've believed all these years hasn't been a lie."

Yet, those outside the church, and many on its periphery, remain unconvinced by the evidence. One Bible teacher told of seeing a woman in a bookstore buying a Gnostic bible. Written many years after the four biblical gospels (not before them, as the fictional Teibing asserts), the Gnostic gospels invite people (as Teabing invited Sophie) to "knowledge" hidden from the masses.

The Bible teacher told the lady the facts about the Gnostics. She replied, "I still prefer this bible."

My question is: Why? Why do people prefer the hoax? Why has our exposing of Brown's disinformation fallen on deaf ears?

And where better to drop this bomb than in a society where the church culture has rejected the mystery of God?

Deuteronomy 29:29 says, "There are secrets the Lord your God has not revealed to us, but these words that he has revealed are for us and our children to obey forever" (TLB).

One presupposition of our Western church mindset is that we have figured out all God's secrets - and neatly categorized them to fit into a box labeled, "Systematic Theology." Of course, the plethora of denominations shows that we're far from agreed on what actually fits into the box, and where. But, hey, by disregarding a scripture here and reinterpreting a scripture there, each group can pretty well deflate mystery and stuff what's left into our particular box - while loudly pointing out the things our Christian neighbors have disregarded and reinterpreted to fit their box.

Isaiah 45:15 describes God as "a God who hides himself" (NIV).

Colossians 2:2-4 says, "I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we've been shown the mystery! I'm telling you this because I don't want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or 'the Secret'" (MSG).

God is mystery. Christ is mystery. His purpose is not to puff up a few by giving them special knowledge, but rather to show what He chooses of Himself to those who desire His treasures enough to seek them and who will handle what He reveals in ways that honor Him and point others to the same rich knowledge. While this God has made very clear the foundational truths we must know in order to embrace His life, there is much He still has not revealed.

We were made for mystery, because God is mystery. By trying to explain everything about God and His working, by insisting that our particular theological system rationally answers every question pertaining to Him, we've misrepresented Him. And we've misled people. Not wanting God-in-a-box, they go looking in the wrong places, for the wrong reasons, seeking secret things.

But before we dust off our hands too quickly, maybe we'd better look a little closer at what is the truth and who is refusing to believe it.

Yes, Brown's heretical conclusions are built on factual errors. But under all his errors are some foundational statements that we, if we humbled ourselves, would recognize as true. Regretfully, in some glaring instances (and many not-so-well-known ones), both in history and in our day, people known as church leaders (both Catholic and Protestant):

• Have used "underhanded political maneuvers" to solidify and maintain their own power.
• Have been involved in giant cover-ups.
• Have treated women poorly, often as a result of a sincere desire to follow Scripture and a belief that the mystery of the two genders must be stuffed into a given theological box.

So while we're writing book after book, denouncing The Da Vinci Code and pointing out the correct historical facts of our choosing, the people around us are sensing, "Brown may have gotten his facts mixed up, but what he says about the church fits with what we've observed."

We will not convince people otherwise by insisting, "We're right!" Instead, we prepare their hearts for truth by admitting what they already know: "We've sinned."

In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller tells of a group of college students who did just that. This little band of believers set up a confessional booth on their vocally anti-Christian university campus. When people came into the confessional, the Christians were the ones who did the confessing, sincerely asking forgiveness for specific ways the church throughout history and they as individual believers had sinned. Among other things, Miller said to one young man, "I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know Him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across."

That act of genuine confession radically impacted people who had never before had any use for Jesus or His followers. Confession opened the way for those Christian students to tell the truly good things Christ-followers have done and the astounding news of who He is.

When folks in our culture read Sir Teibing's declaration that Jesus was only a mortal man, they're likely to look at the church and not see anything that tells them otherwise. If Jesus is God and the church is His Body, shouldn't we be acting like one supernatural body, rather than a mob of unstable, selfish, bickering children?

Shouldn't we be showing Christ's character - living out the mystery of holiness and love, treating others as better than ourselves and honoring God as God? Shouldn't it be evident that we clearly hear His voice and obey, because we deeply love Him, deeply respect Him and deeply desire for others to know "the God of gods, the Lord over kings, a revealer of mysteries" (Dan. 2:47 NLT)?

Shouldn't we demonstrate the supernatural power of Christ? In his book, Megashift, James Rutz describes how Christians around the world are asking God to work miracles - and seeing Him do them. Meanwhile, we in the US are primarily trying to convince people that Jesus is God by rational argument alone. We claim to have dynamite but cannot produce an explosion.

Until we show people the character of Christ and the power of Christ, we will have great difficulty convincing them of the truth of Christ. Until we begin looking like a living, supernatural Body, we'll have little success convincing doubters of Jesus' divinity.

It is heinous to lead anyone into error. And yet, thanks to error, our sins and our shortcomings have been exposed. Instead of trying to explain away that mystery, what if we in the Body of Christ begin asking people, "Forgive us!" What if we began pleading, "Jesus, be honored through us!"

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Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday (2003), pp. 1, 230-250. Quotes, in order, are from pp. 230, 231, 234, 233, 238, 1.

sophism. Dictionary.com. WordNet® 2.0, Princeton University. http://dictionary.reference.com/search? q=sophism (accessed: September 14, 2006).

Miller, Donald. Blue Like Jazz, Thomas Nelson Publishers (2003), p. 123. Chapter 11, "Confession," is worth the cost of the book.

Rutz, James. Megashift: Igniting Spiritual Power, Empowerment Press (2005).

Scripture quotations are from The Living Bible (TLB), New International Version (NIV), New Living Translation (NLT), and The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson (MSG). All rights reserved.

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See what you're missing! Live in the moment! Focused Living in a Frazzled World: 105 Snapshots of Life. (Featured in "Rest Stops," Journey magazine, October 2006)

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In John's gospel, Jesus identifies himself several times with the I AM God of the Old Testament. See what he revealed. Let a new understanding of who he is lead to new understanding of how to pray. Go to Praying Together at www.keytruths.com.

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What do the following have in common: "Confessions of a Religious Has-Been," "Deliver Us!" and "What We Don't See"? To find out, browse Deborah's speaking topics at www.keytruths.com.)

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