Do you recommend that Christians educate themselves by watching the movie or buying Dan Brown's book ?

Our pastor recommends strongly AGAINT watching the movie and/or reading the Da Vinci code. His reasoning is that If you watch this coming movie, you are actually giving part of your money to his pocket of the author for producing falsehood.

He discourages any Christian from seeing the movie, knowing that it is all about lies.

But I believe that in order to educate myself to the arguments of the other side, I have to at least KNOW what the other side is saying.

What is your opinion on this ?

Thanks.
 

The question that needs to be asked is why are you (or anyone) going to see the movie or read the book.

As you have already said, you are interesting in watching it or reading it in order to gain an understanding of it's arguments (in order to properly address them with others and continue your own truth search I assume). I think this is a great thing to do. In checking it out, you should also check out some of the multitudes of books that criticise the Da Vinci Code (DVC) in order to get a better understanding of the falseness of the books claims.

If someones motivation was merely to be entertained, then I would say it was wrong for them to go see it, for the reasons your pastor gives.

Of course, you don't necessarily have to buy the book to read it (borrow it from a friend or get it from a second hand book store), which would not be supporting Dan Brown or his publishers. The movie is a different story, as waiting for the dvd to come out will likely miss the opportunity to discuss it with many people whilst there is still a buzz.

If you are interested in reading some online criticisms, you could try Focus on the family's response or the volumous but very good series by Mark D Roberts on the DVC opportunity.
 

Funny about this whole controversy over the movie, and the book, too. Why is it such a difficult concept for people to understand that both are WORKS OF FICTION!

it just seems to me that people whose faith would be destroyed by a movie or a book ... really didn't have a whole lot of faith to begin with.

just my opinion.

as far as what Anonymous asked -- i think one upside of the movie, and the controversy, is that it offers an opening for you to talk about your faith. If you don't see the movie, then it's going to be next to impossible to discuss it with someone.
 

Yeah...However Dan Brown is peddling it as fact, not fiction, which is why there is so much confusion.

I have to agree that it is a great opportunity though.