The Lost Symbol Review

Posted by Angelia White on November 30th, 2009 in Blog | No Comments

Oh, Dan Brown. You’re so very Dan Brown.

If you open up The Lost Symbol as one familiar with the way Brown writes a thriller, you will not be disappointed when you finally close it (on the last page, of course). Now, if you’re familiar with Dan Brown, you also open the book expecting to achieve a serious intellectual workout (good) and to run across some kind of badly-concluded, out-of-context interpretation of Scripture (annoying). And, of course, you picked it up in the first place expecting his absolutely masterful suspense to glue you to your chair until sunrise. What? We all love that sort of thing.

Like I said, he doesn’t disappoint. At the climax of the story, a plot twist came out of nowhere and kicked me right between the eyes. Never saw it coming. Now, I”m a writer and an editor. I look for things like this. I’m trained to find things like this. And it still got me between the eyes. Ah! I love that!

So, the guy’s a genius. And yet, his conclusions on God and Scripture, are as usual, stupid. I just spent twenty minutes looking for a word other than stupid, and I can’t think of one. Yeah, I’m a Christian. But I’m not the kind who calls all differing opinions stupid. The thing is, if you have nothing but one line of Scripture, standing alone, and you draw whatever kind of conclusion you want to draw from it, I’m going to call it what it is: stupid. If I opened up Plato’s Republic, closed my eyes and pointed to the page, read the line on which my finger rested, drew my own conclusion as to what that means, and then wrote a book about this is what Plato believed, that’s a stupid argument. There could be a needle-in-a-haystack chance that I’m right. But, in all probability, I just made a stupid argument. No one would argue that.

True to Brown’s style, main character Robert Langdon’s final conclusion comes long after the climax hits and the story ends, so by telling you the following, I’m not spoiling the plot. But if you’d rather this be a surprise, then skip ahead to SPOILER ALL DONE.

The great discovery at the end is that there is no God. Well, there is, but it’s all of us who are small gods. In fact, that’s what Scripture says; it’s just been mistranslated and misinterpreted for thousands of years.

Okay, really? Has he ever opened the Bible? Let’s look at Ecclesiastes 5:2. Well, we could look at anything in Ecclesiastes to prove my point, but let’s look at 5:2 for the sake of space:

“Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven, and you are on earth, so let your words be few.”

I’m pretty sure it’s clear that God is an existent, separate being in whose presence we should kiss the floor. Misinterpretation? Maybe. But I don’t think I’m too far off.

SPOILER ALL DONE.

The way Brown presents his take on Scripture upsets me, not because he’s attacking my faith (I’m a writer and my projects have endured many-a-pummeling””I promise, I can take it), but because he is undoubtedly misleading thousands upon thousands of readers who have never really looked into Scripture. He presents it as truth, as a “well, duh” from the minds of experts. But let’s be honest. Brown’s “experts” are fictional, and as long as they exist in his mind, they can believe whatever he wants them to.

So, here’s what. I love the art he makes, but be so, so careful. If something about his use of Scripture doesn’t sit right with you, look it up. Read it in context. If he says, “all experts believe this,” check it out. Do they really? They might not. He is, after all, a novelist. He can say experts believe most everyone is born with a magic wand between their toes; he’s got that artistic license.

Just don’t be swayed because a really amazing piece of fiction talked you into it.