This is not a review for the famous Dan Brown book. Let’s just say this is an assessment of the book’s overall impact on me. Even for someone who’s heard his fair share of conspiracy theories and whodunnit movies, this book stil strikes me a convincingly realistic. I won’t dwell on those points that make it so. I’d rather focus on how surprised I am to be JUST entertained after reading the book. Yes, those capitals are deliberate.
Wanna know why?
Around 7or 8 years ago, reading this book would’ve left me more disturbed than entertained. Yep. Long before the Da Vinci and Angels hoopla, I was (can’t say for sure if I still am) convinced that there was a high-level plot to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church and destroy the 2,000 year old institution from within.It so happened that my sister has a professor whose avowed purpose in life is to relate the scariest, most dumbfounding Anti-Christian conspiracy theories and stories a teenage Roman Catholic could ever hear. Naturally my sister would tell me those stories and I’d be swallowing em’ hook, line and sinker. Since then I’ve always been on the look-out for the AntiChrist’s influence whenever and wherever I go…even inside churches. I’ve turned to reading all those stories and books about the Freemasonry, the New World Order and all else in between. I seriously got scared of anything and everything that’s supposedly related to the King of Terror/Third Antichrist who will allegedly rise from the East to rain death, destruction and war throughout the world in the Devil’s name: barcodes, the 666, the Pentagram or Baphometh and all the other arcane symbols of the occult or black arts.
And then the terrible truth came knocking on the door.
I learned about the crusades, the Auto da Fes, the Grand Inquisitions, Tomas de Torquemada, the Iron Maiden and all sorts of torture and injustice my mother church has done on the accused and non-believers. Even educated, reasonable men were not spared from the wrath of the so-called men-of-god. Even Filipinos who have adopted Christ as their own have suffered, labored and spat blood on the feet of the almighty friars who strutted around and played God during 300 years of Spanish rule in these islands. History has a cruel way of dishing out reality checks to the ignorant like me.
Suffice to say, my faith was badly shaken. It’s a pity considering the way I defended my faith from all forms of corruption when I was young.
Anyway, at this stage in my life, I can say that although religion is no longer of paramount importance to me, I still have faith in the one, singular God we call by different names. That’s better than having faith in men who say one thing and do another. Call me a heretic or a demon or whatever I don’t care…The truth is out there and its everyone’s responsibility to know them and the lessons they teach.
Amen.
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