By the midpoint in High School my reading habits actually had a negative affect on my academic life as I would skip school quite often and spend the day at the Main Library in downtown Dayton lost in whatever I could find in the stacks. School bored me to tears but every book was a new adventure and the library became my refuge from school.

I point this out not to blow my intellectual horn or to lay claim to some vast storehouse of knowledge because I doubt that I've retained even a small percentage of what appeared on the pages that I've had my nose stuck in all these years. No, I point this out to assure the public that although I've been a lifelong unsupervised addictive reader I've miraculously come through the experience relatively unscathed.

I have somehow been left unharmed by the written word, although I've consumed works by tyrants like Hitler and Mao, Saints like Augustine and Francis, and inveterate scoundrels, poltroons as well as a few self proclaimed geniuses. I've read dime novels and thirty dollar best sellers, Bibles and weighty tomes, history and biography, science and pornography and through it all I have managed to avoid insanity, incarceration and the loss of my immortal soul, or so I believed until recently.

It was an article in USA today that caused me to question whether my life of undisciplined consumption of the written word has sown the seeds of eternal damnation in my soul.

To wit:
"Code" not benign
By Ted Baehr in USA Today May 18

A few pundits are arguing that Christians should read the bestselling book The Da Vinci Code and see the movie to "engage the culture" and as a tool for evangelism.
By that argument, we should encourage people to read other popular, but infamous, works: Chinese dictator Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, or The Communist Manifesto. Or, why not Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic diatribe popular in Muslim circles?
It would be wonderful to believe Christians can argue the facts to Dan Brown's hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history. The truth is, however, that many people have not read a Bible or understood their faith sufficiently to counter the story's intricacies.
Does the average person know what Gnostic Gospels are? Are people familiar with the Catholic group Opus Dei? What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children? Has the church hidden important facts from the faithful? These are just some of the complex issues discussed in The Da Vinci Code Although it is fiction, it contains enough references to history to make Christians question their beliefs.
The slanderous distortions and falsehoods are as dangerous as they are numerous. The movie threatens to strike another massive blow to people's understanding and knowledge of God, Christianity and history.
Although the movie waters down the novel's anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ and increase prejudice against Christians.
So, what should Christians do?
Direct churches and individuals to sound books, websites and other resources to help them understand the issues. Sign the petition on www.movieguide.org expressing concern over the movie. But, most of all, don't see the movie, especially the first week of release. If you have to go to a movie, however, go see another one instead.
Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder of Movieguide.org.

Now this has me a bit worried, not that my Christian beliefs are in danger, the sanctimony and hypocrisy of the Church and many of it's most vocal faithful destroyed any connection I might have with them many years ago. No, I am concerned that all these dangerous words and concepts and ideas may be rattling around inside me and creating some great cancer in my soul that would cause me to question the moral authority of such learned and pious men as Mr. Baehr.

I looked up his website and found that he is tirelessly at work in his "ministry" (annual subscription $40 US) protecting us from unwholesome books and movies by reviewing them and applying a ratings system which ranges from Good, Wholesome through Extreme Caution to Abhorrent. The Da Vinci Code received the Abhorrent rating, the movie that is, the book rated no better in the review I read on the site.

I read the book myself two or three years ago and found it to be a "good read" one of those pot boilers that will keep you in an easy chair through a long afternoon and evening and wishing for one more chapter. A "good read" nothing more, an enjoyable work of fiction, nothing earthshaking, nothing that I would ever imagine would cause the controversy and hand wringing that has arisen among some in the Christian community.

As for the movie, I haven't seen it and probably won't until it comes out on television. The last movie that I saw in a theater was "Cape Fear" with De Niro about fifteen years ago. I don't go to theaters because they won't let me sit around in my underwear and drink beer. So I can't say much about the film but old Ted Baehr thinks it's pretty dangerous and I guess that should be good enough for me.

This flap reminds me a little of the Dan Quayle "Murphy Brown" nonsense back in the eighties. I'm not sure what it is about the "family values" people or the "Christian thought police" that enables them to spot these grave dangers to my soul long before I ever notice them but they sure are good at it.

It's also very comforting that they have illuminated the moral pathway so brightly for us, and so carefully identified all the traps and pitfalls along the way that we can follow it without stumbling, with our eyes shut, even in fact, with our heads implanted deeply in the sand.

My life is surely enriched by those like Mr. Baehr who work so diligently to keep me safe from heresy and apostasy, from the blaspheming free thinkers and their dangerous ideas, from these writers of fictional filth and wanton historical speculation.

Fortunately I'm not a member of Baehr's Christian flock or herd or I might take offense at what some might see as a terribly paternalistic attitude toward the faithful and a shameful disdain of their intelligence and ability to think for themselves.

What is so frightening to these folks about a work of fiction is a mystery to me unless they fear fiction because they have always been afraid that they have based their entire lives on a work of fiction. I just don't know.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust