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There are often questions asked of this ministry that I answer--or at least, I try to--and, sometimes, I think those questions may be of interest to other readers as well. So my answers, without the personal information about or to the specific reader, I will sometimes publish here. After all, this ministry's goal is to teach the truth of God's word and common sense. But, of course, and be assured, I will never use this valuable space to entertain foolishness and needless wrangling over matters of no significance that do not edify the church and the people of God.

In Psalms 19, King David says that there is no language or speech where God's voice is not heard. To this end,  I recognize that anthropologists have discovered archetypes common to all peoples and cultures. Therefore, I know what may be of interest to one or that which may trouble one, may, in fact, be of interest or trouble others as well because there is a human commonality that cannot be denied.

King David of ancient Israel and the great Apostle Paul recognized the presence of God's DNA, as it were, in all that He has made. And that is the cause for the anthropological archetypes and universalities in peoples and cultures that have never intersected with each other. [Acts 17]

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A reader wrote, asking if I would disprove from scripture that Jesus did not marry Mary and have children by her, as put forth in the novel, Da Vinci Code. And is that possible?

I thought this a somewhat frivolous question initially, but I remembered a minister once said that a sister asked him to pray for a sick pig, and he would not, but the sister was so disturbed over the health of that pig that he decided that to pray for the pig was to pray for the sister. So I decided to answer this reader's question because others may be troubled about things said in the Da Vinci Code.
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It is difficult to prove a negative; furthermore, I have not read this novel and do not know exactly what it says; I have read and heard some reviews and discussions about it.  I know that writers have artistic license to say and write what they will in this nation when writing fiction; it is the nature of this government and our laws. 

First, all things are possible, but because they are possible, that possibility does not mean all things are probable or that they occur. The novel, Da Vinci Code, is just that, a novel—a fictionalized work that may be written to advance a theme or to allow the reader to escape the stressors of life; that is the function of art.* In fictionalized works, writers take great liberty with truth, the credulity, the facts, and flights of imagination. It is what they do, and they expect intelligent people to suspend their belief systems for flights of imagination and suppositions. No writer is asking, in a fictionalized work, the reader to become a believer. He/she hopes that the reader will buy and read, and respond—and that is all.

No Christ-believing person could ever go to school, especially into higher education, as a believer and come out still a believer if school asked or demanded that he/she believe that which he/she learns. Quite to the contrary, school places only the obligation that we learn, not that we believe. And one who cannot or will not allow his/her mind to grapple with concepts, flights of fantasy, etc., contrary to his spiritual or other philosophical beliefs will be an intellectual cripple for life! 

Too often, I am confronted by failing students who mutter such nonsense as, "I could not write in support of that notion, because I did not believe it." That may seem sensible to them, but to a professor, it will quickly garner a failing grade. I have taken many courses in Anthropology, Archeology, Evolutions, etc., and encountered many concepts that defied what I believe; I was asked to support notions I did not and do not believe, but all of this was a mere exercise in academic mind development, not belief challenge toward its  transformation. Such weakness is the ignorance of the Religious Right that would stifle thought because it differs from theirs and, to them, threatens theirs. This is also a practice and behavior peculiar to Muslim theology as well. But I know in whom I have believed, and I am not, at all, confused about the truth and what I believe. The God whom I serve is real, and I know in real ways his realness. I suggest a closer walk with him will assure the weak in their belief system.

As a minister, I am concerned about one believing the truth of God; as an intellectual and professor, I am not interested in a student believing those non-spiritual concepts I am by law obligated and by contract paid to teach. I am interested that their minds grow to comprehend hard to understand notions postulated by various thinkers. As spiritual people of God, Christians desperately need to see that a person cannot refute a notion if he/she cannot comprehend it.

I am sorry for those “Christians” who feel the DA Vinci Code needs refutation; it’s a needless obligation that is  usually peculiar to the Religious Right, whom I have serious problems with their being religious and certainly about their being right! Those whom God has called will come to him, and no man can stop that process; certainly not a fictionalized novel.

Second, since you asked, I will answer you from the scripture. The scripture says nothing about Jesus marrying Mary or anyone else. What carnal human beings often do is put human sentimentality on godly matters or on God himself. Of course, there is supposed to be some scholarly research in this area, but that research is not credible. It is a weakened premise to argue that Jesus married Mary or anyone else. Jesus is God, as John 1:1-14 boldly says. And God came to earth for a specific purpose: to take away the sins of the world, not to experience carnal pleasures of a woman or a man. 

Carnal human beings often elevate their carnality and flawed desires as the tastes and carnality of all, but there are people of God and people generally who can tame the flesh and not surrender to the base elements of human nature. Certainly Jesus was one of those. To the carnal, all things are carnal, yet there are greater pleasures than fleshly pleasures> And if one is deceived into thinking that fleshly pleasures are all there is or that they are the highest pleasures human beings can obtain,  that person is limited indeed. There are adventures with God that can far exceed such humanly pleasures. 

While most of humankind is given to sexual experiences, there are millions who are not.  [Psa. 40:7] How would sex [and that is all this notion attempts to convey] or marriage advance the will of God? His purpose? **

God’s ways and desires are not man’s ways and desires; neither are his thoughts man’s thoughts. [Isa.55:8] It is demeaning to think that God would come in the flesh for one purpose and be so weak as to divert himself to another. The need was to redeem sinful, wrong-thinking man from his sin and wrong way of thinking and return them back to God.

Finally, notice that neither Paul, Peter, John, James, nor any other apostle talked about the wife of Jesus. And Jesus told John to take care of his mother, not his wife. Mary, out of whom Jesus cast many devils and forgave her of great sins, was so passionate about Jesus because he had forgiven her of much. [Lke. 7:47; John 19:27] When the people there during Jesus' time,  talked about Jesus’ relatives outside calling for him, no one said that his wife was calling or was among those who were calling. He had no wife. [Mat. 12:47] We see that other disciples had wives; Paul explicitly says he has no wife; and there was never any talk about Jesus having a wife--such was foolishness. 

Notice the absence in the disciples' writing about any reference to Mary as his wife. That wasn’t a mere lapse of memory on the part of Jesus’ disciples. This absence is because there was no marriage.

Dear brothers and sisters, let not your heart be troubled because someone has gotten creative in his fictionalization of a canard. That happens all the time, and if you are carried away by the foolishness of men, you cannot be a servant of God. Be strong in the Lord and the power of his might!  [John 14]

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*Writers are always looking for a unique way of capturing the attention and imagination of a reader. The Da Vinci Code plays upon the wiry scholarship of one writer who has postulated that Jesus married. This is utterly ridiculous, but it provides fodder for fiction.

** The limitations of a few are assumed as the limitations of all. Unholy men tend to think that all others are unholy as well--how tragic!
 I remember a UC Berkeley student who was so self-assured of his own intelligence that he stated, as we toyed with an intellectual concept in a Critical Thinking course I was teaching, that if he could not see other options that, maybe, there were no other options. That is flawed reasoning; the same flawed reasoning that, no doubt, gave birth to the assumption that our weak researchers used as premise for postulating that Jesus had a wife (because a man needs a woman--after all, didn't Adam need a wife and God made him one?--and Jesus was also man.  Jesus, however, was the second Adam, and he was superior to the first in every way. 

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