“Pop culture discovers Jesus — once a year”

  • In case you weren’t offended enough by “The Lost Tomb of Christ,” this blog post from Michael Medved indi­cates that the “Easter Sur­prise” is on its way.

    I’ve been work­ing on a major col­umn for USA TODAY (it’s slated to run in the news­pa­per on Mon­day) about the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel doc­u­men­tary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” In the course of my research I learned that Newsweek is plan­ning a big fea­ture story in its March 28th issue under the head­line FROM JESUS TO THE CHRIST.

    Isn’t it amaz­ing how our pop­u­lar cov­er­age dis­cov­ers Jesus once a year, every year, at just about this time? Do you think it’s a coin­ci­dence that we get a major TV doc­u­men­tary (and a new book asso­ci­ated with it) as well as a big Newsweek arti­cle at just about the same time? Could this sud­den flurry of inter­est pos­si­bly relate to the upcom­ing Easter holiday?

    The strat­egy behind this tim­ing is slightly patron­iz­ing, even insult­ing. Once a year, just before obser­vances com­mem­o­rat­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion, the media sud­denly (and briefly) recall that hun­dreds of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans take Christ and Chris­tian­ity very seri­ously indeed. They there­fore strain to hype some “sen­sa­tional new dis­cov­ery” (“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” “The Gospel of Judas,” etc.) in an effort to make their trans­par­ent exploita­tion of reli­gious enthu­si­asm seem newsy and relevant.

    I’ve begun spec­u­lat­ing on what breath­less, heavily-hyped “sci­en­tific break­throughs” they may gen­er­ate next (“DNA Iden­ti­fies Skele­ton as Pet Dog of Jesus!”) but it’s hard to take this too far with­out tilt­ing over toward sacrilege.

    It might be refresh­ing if our media gate keep­ers remem­bered that many Amer­i­cans remain pas­sion­ately inter­ested in Jesus every month, every day, nur­tur­ing a fas­ci­na­tion that isn’t lim­ited to the few weeks lead­ing up to a big reli­gious holiday.

    I wish I was as cer­tain that it’s a “trans­par­ent exploita­tion of reli­gious enthu­si­asm” that’s to blame. I think that there’s also the fac­tor of col­lid­ing world­views between believ­ing Chris­tians and believ­ing secularists.

    Well any­way, we’ve got a cou­ple weeks before this arti­cle appears. If I can adopt the opti­mistic point of view of those who say that all of these attempts to dis­credit Christ and His Church rep­re­sent an oppor­tu­nity to edu­cate and dia­logue, that means there are a cou­ple weeks to get ready. To judge from the title — “From Jesus to the Christ” — it sounds like we’re about to hear an expanded claim on Dan Brown’s notion that Jesus wasn’t thought to be divine until it was “voted on” at the First Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil. If so, the pro­po­nents will have to do bet­ter than Brown — there’s absolutely no foun­da­tion for that claim at all. Like many howlers in the exe­crable “Da Vinci Code” it was tossed off as fact and never dis­puted. But in any case, it looks like it’s time to brush up on the Seven Coun­cils, the Bib­li­cal val­i­da­tion for the divin­ity of Christ, the early Church teach­ings on it, etc. etc. etc. Not to men­tion seek­ing the strength and peace to be an instru­ment of the Truth in a world that loves lies.

    By a coin­ci­dence, I watched a video last night that dis­putes the claims of the “DaVinci Code.” Now, good­ness knows, we’d all like to let this sleep­ing dog lie. But I don’t know. It looks like both Cameron’s “Lost Tomb” and this upcom­ing fea­ture arti­cle are in a sense the off­spring of that mutt. So appar­ently that dog hadn’t just been sleep­ing; it had “got­ten busy” (as the bad guy in The Incred­i­bles says). As mind-bogglingly insup­port­able and unrea­son­able as these “DaVinci” the­o­ries seem to us, it appears that they take their toll on peo­ple in our soci­ety. Seems like we might need to get busy and pro­duce some off­spring of our own.

    Good thing it’s Lent. That’s the name of the game any­way, right?


    Related posts:

    2. Mus­lim cul­ture clash — what hap­pens now?
    3. Phony gospels give me the blues
    4. It’s fall! I’m draw­ing as fast as I can!
    5. Abor­tion is mur­der, but that’s a woman’s right(?)

    March 9th, 2007 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Mimi 03.09.2007

    How true that is.

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