Okay, duck because I’m about to get ruthless…
With The DaVinci Code hitting theaters this weekend, it amazes me the passionate vitriol with which some Christians are attacking this movie. Even in my office, I’ve heard the church goers have the most baseless and negative comments about a book they haven’t even read in most cases.
And even those that do read it have the same stock line: “It’s only fiction.” Well, what do you think The Bible is? If you think that The Bible is a historical document full of factual information then you’re an idiot. If, however, you understand that The Bible is a historical path of spiritual thoughts mixed with history that many different cultures contributed to and is a snail trail of mythological art and rituals which were metaphorically valid at some point in time but which are as outdated today as stove pipe hats, then you are one step further on the road to understanding.
And I don’t care if you’re an scheister ass like Rod Parsley here in the Midwest parceling out fear and hatred in the guise of religious worship or if you’re a neo-hipster Christian like Tony Pierce who doles out five cent sermons in stream of consciousness prose posts that seem open-minded on the surface but on closer inspection turn out to be bigoted, cliched, and dried up idol worship without substance. If you’re bashing a book you haven’t read because it challenges the card house of metaphoric worship you’ve set up for yourself as the corner stone of your existence, then you are small-minded, petty, and pathetic.
And I’ve just about exhausted my patience when it comes to people who have no tolerance for ideas different from their own. I’m talking about people whose entire self worth is wrapped up in a string of broken imagistic experiences they have mistaken as a static entity which exists independent of the natural world but is actually as fragile as a cotton ball thrown into an open flame. I’m talking about ego people, the beginning and the end of it. I’m talking about true freedom which only lies beyond the known and can never register in a mind that has been humbled through the submissive worship of symbols instead of through the complete death of the ego and the total cessation of time which accompanies it.
I’m talking about Eternity here, the realm of the sacred in the temporal flow of birth and death which all animals are imprisoned in from jump.
In the first chapter of my upcoming book How to Think, I decimate the entire foundation of Western thought as mere idol worship and put out a clarion signal to move beyond this petty first stage of thinking to the next creative phase of freedom in thought. Many will be incapable of this leap past logic and hero worship but you know what, too bad! Show me ten people whose minds are completely free from the corpulent husks of religions and philosophies built through time and death and I will show you a lever long enough to move the universes both within and outside the limited mind of man.
I have gone back to reread my copy of The DaVinci Code (the illustrated edition) before I go see the movie. I loved the book and it doesn’t matter to me one iota if its fact or fiction. I love it the same way I love the story of Jesus rushing the Temple of Jerusalem and turning over the money changing tables, pointing his finger in the faces of the politicians, the merchants (corporations of his time), and the priests who stood at the barricades of heaven cherry picking souls like a cosmic Club 54 and said, “Fuck you, assholes–there are things in this world and the next which are not for sale or barter. So back up before my daddy bitch slaps you and tears this temple of stone down to the bone (and I’ll rebuild the bitch in three days as a final eff you)!”
Regardless of its historical authenticity, Dan Brown has given us one hell of an interesting mystery to read and reread for hundreds of years and at the same time, he stuck a red hot poker up the asses of the holier than thous of our world and is smiling all the way to the bank about it. And now the same churches responsible for the burning, torturing, and general mass murder of 5,000,000 women over a 300-year period are being called to account for their physical and spiritual crimes against humanity. Well, boo hoo! My heart’s pumping purple panther piss for them.
See, I respect real faith which is as immovable as the massive black holes at the hearts of galaxies. And if your faith happens to be fed through the symbols of The Bible and is something that connects and opens you to the human beings and the natural world around you as well as the god and gods within you; then I say, “A Salud! Consider yourself on the path of enlightenment!”
But if your faith is dependent on wooden symbols which are constantly in danger of succumbing to the fires of time and history and you use these symbols as weapons and gates of death to keep you separate and distant from your fellow man, then you are a cosmic fool and I predict that an ocean of fear will swallow your wooden faith like a sewer grate tossed into the open ocean from heaven.
The final word is that if a book of fiction is enough to challenge a faith based on the historical accuracy of your religious metaphors, then you never had faith in the first place and deserve to lose your illusions. So stop lying to yourself, free your mind, and read the frigging book already.
LINKS:
- I Beat Dan Brown by Three Years in Writing a Fictional Story About Jesus’s Bloodline in My 1998 Short Story Rising Earth and a Shadow of the Moon’s Conspiracy (scroll to the bottom to read from the beginning)
- Follow the heated DaVinci Code discussion on the JCF forum (requires registration)
- When Tony Pierce Attacks and When He Attacks Again and Tony Pierce Hates on The DaVinci Code (Make sure to read the comments on this post where Tony and I go at it about religion and he ends up attacking my politics)
- Funniest tag line of the day comes from Fark: “[Ironic] Vatican says of Davinci Code: ‘…shows mass ignorance… and promotes products that have nothing to do with the truth.’ Irony meter off the scale”
TAGS:
The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown, Christianity, Faith, The Bible, Rod Parsley, Tony PierceIf you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You Should Also Check Out This Post:
- Disney World as a Right of Passage: Raising Better Children While Hating Everyone in Line Around You
- Understanding Abney's Effect in the Creation of Fiction
- Help, Facebook Is Killing My Blog! How I Survived Social Networking and Make It Work for Me
- "Masturbating in the Back Seat While Nobody's Watching": Short Fiction by Joshua Minton
- We Ain't Dead Yet Muddafuggas (Gettin' Yo Mind Straight in Zero Eight)
More Active Posts:
- President Bush is Incompetent and I am Done with Two-Party Voting (16)
- Big Brother, Karl Rove, the Comptroller and BioShock Rules (13)
- Bus Blog? I'm Not Impressed (12)
- Is It Time for a Black President in America? (12)
- Farting in a Crowded Room: Bush's Pardoning of Scooter Libby (12)
- How to Think: Altruism (11)
- The Virginia Tech Massacre: Why You Shouldn't Fug Around with English Students (11)
- Reaction to Ron Paul's Alleged Racism, The Bullshit Reason Behind Warner Going Blu-Ray, and the Three Arses Who Are Suing Microsoft Over XBox Live (11)
- BWP on Sopranos Episode 67: Join the Club (10)
- The DaVinci Code and Attack of the Christian Half-Wits (9)

Tweet This
![Firefly: The Complete Series [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51734pRq2%2BL._SL160_.jpg)
![Band of Brothers [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51raX%2BcY0GL._SL160_.jpg)

















Joshua Minton holds a Creative Writing degree from BGSU and is the author of 


Tony’s response (see first link above) is typical. He honed in on the fact that this blog doesn’t receive very many comments. This is true and is also because my writing style is the type that ends discussions rather than begins them. I learned a long time ago that silence following your gig is a good thing–it means that its sinking into the gray matter of your audience or that they didn’t care or weren’t listening in the first place–either way, even better for the person on stage. Here is a man whose entire sum worth is measured by his blog’s place on the Technorati 100 list (of which it like 256)–it’s just pathetic.
And he of course goes back to attacking my politics and how Ohio sucks because we hate black people and elected Bush twice, blah blah blah…
But the bottom line is that there is one of us who was accepted into creative writing school. There is one of us who earned the respect of other serious writers by putting their work through the fire of workshopping and having it come out cleaner, better, sharper. There is one of us who has been able to maintain a long-term monogamous relationship that has resulted in children and a stable family base. There is one of us that has maintained a steady career by developing business and networking skills on which we can stake our personal fortune.
And then there is one of us who has huddled up in a little room in front of a little computer for five years, eschewing proper grammar because we probably wouldn’t get it right in the first place, and trying to convince the world (successfully in some cases) that what we had to say was worthy of being reread in ten years.
See, I could have been this man had I not made the choice to accept the love of a great woman into my heart, to settle down, have a family, and vote Republican in the ‘00 and ‘04 elections. I could probably have 50,000 page loads a month also if I were willing to let my heart wither into a little black shrub that I would wear around my neck as a pathetic badge of honor in place of real talent. I’d probably be able to dump every piece of shit thought onto the page, jumble them together, and try to convince everyone that I knew how to tell a good story.
But I’m not like that.
I believe in giving back to the world around me–sometimes it’s advice, sometimes it’s criticism, and sometimes it’s both barrels of the shotgun. Sometimes it’s enough to stand up and speak your piece. Sometimes you have to shout the other guy down. But sometimes you just have to pull out a can of spraypaint, tag the other guy with a red “X” and say to the crowd, “This guy’s an asshole to the core of his soul–don’t go here!”
I started reading the Busblog because I wanted to learn how Tony did it–how he amassed a core of readers. But what I’ve come to learn is that I would rather have ten readers capable of interacting intelligently with what I’m writing than 5,000 yes men, perverts, and social misanthropes daily who did nothing but help to further solidify my already massive and immoveable ego.
I’ve said it privately, now I’m saying it publicly. There is nothing more for me to learn from this man’s writing style or his blog.
Get thee behind me…