So you think The Da Vinci Code is blasphemy? You need to read this, because it’s life, Jim, but not as you know it!...

Hark! I heard an ominous rumble as I passed through our village! No, it wasn’t my stomach – well, not that time, anyway…

Silence...then there it was again! Rumble-mumble-bumble…

Was it…a Harley Davidson that I heard? No – that’s more of a ‘blatta-blat’ noise...

Perhaps it was…the onset of Armageddon? No, that’s usually just the speedway running again…

But wait! I saw great, dark storm clouds gathering, the vivid flashes of lightning and heard the mighty rolling crash of thunder over… the Baptist church!?! Aha! Now I know what’s happening – our very own pulpit-pounding ‘pyrotechnical Pastor’ Jim was once again up in front of his flock, calling down fire, brimstone, hell and damnation on all who dared to…um…read a book??

"Pardon me?" You might ask; allow me to elucidate…

In two issues of our parish newsletter, you could have read the Baptist Church column in which the Pastor had been vehemently and vociferously vivisecting author Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, "The Da Vinci Code" (now also a major film script). Well, it would seem the book has also stabbed raw nerves in other – er – persons-of-the-cloth, too; Pastor Jim was not alone in his ostentatious protestations. Strange, really, as the book is just a fictitious story that essentially covers an unorthodox view on the Holy Grail theme. Hmm - there’s a distinct lack of Testamental tolerance afoot…

In case you’d spent too many months in Outer Mongolia, I’ll recap the novel’s plot very briefly. It follows a professor’s quest to discover the ‘truth’ behind a claim about Jesus’ blood-line (in the form of a collection of ‘family tree’-type documents, or similar), Mary Magdalene appearing to be more than just a bystander, a secret brotherhood protecting the…um…’secret’, bouncing off Pagans, Knights Templar and several other ‘mystic’ clans en route to the truth – and, of course, the professor’s enemies in his journey of discovery takes the villainous form of a renegade Catholic Bishop and a psychopathic monk, both hell-bent on murderously preventing the consequent catastrophic exposure of a centuries-old fraudulent Christian cover-up.

It may sound like a far-fetched and crazy plot to some folks, but it is a very entertaining, thoroughly-enjoyable thriller that I recommend highly to every open-minded citizen…and strangely-enough, I hear a whisper from within that – following the Pastor’s twin tirades - our local supermarkets have experienced a slight upsurge in this novel’s sales … How strange...

Perhaps the sales increase may have a connection with the ministerial mention of Pagan (sex) rituals? Perhaps the new readers are keener to learn about those, more than the plot itself, I wonder? Hmm – I’m intrigued! Has anyone a contact address for the local Pagan Swingers Society? Sounds like fun… Ahem! I digress…

From that parish magazine column – and other sources - we are urged to believe that The Da Vinci Code is pure baloney, but…well…methinks that the clergy doth protest too much!!

Gadzooks! Perchance that the novel’s ‘claims’ are too close to the ‘truth’ for comfort? Perhaps all churches are party to the greatest religion-wide ‘cover-up’ in history?? That, dear reader, would go some way to explain particularly potent palpitational pontifications, of late! The novel’s plot (if even vaguely true) would almost certainly qualify the oft-said phrase "Jesus lives on in all our hearts", if the Messiah’s blood-line has continued through Mary Magdalene’s womb, as the story is purported to ‘claim’ – yet who can prove, indisputably, that it hasn’t continued in this way? Not even the Vatican…and let's face it, the canny Cardinals wouldn’t endorse that theory, anyway, or the clergy would all be claiming unemployment benefits, tout-de-suite.

Well, if The Da Vinci Code has resoundingly rattled rectory railings, I can’t help but wonder – just for a jaunty jest - how the clergy en masse might have reacted to another book that I read in my youth? It was a compendium of novelettes written at the time when the phrase ‘genetic engineering’ was first coined for the masses.

The central thread of the stories was that of an alien race cruising the cosmos in a vast spaceship-laboratory, seeking out planets to ‘colonise’ – with a difference. Instead of invading and annihilating, they’d assess the current inhabitants (if any), wipe out the nasties among them, do any ecological modifications that were necessary to sustain intelligent life, and then biologically engineer a new ‘breed’ to evolve into a superior ‘race’, tailored to that environment. Thus, fish went to water-based planets, birds to others, insectoids on another, etc, etc – until, finally, this alien ‘Creator’ race came upon a green and blue planet, removed the huge, vicious carnivores from its surface by ‘firing’ a couple of passing asteroids at it to alter to atmosphere for a while, and when the dust settled, re-populated the planet with genetic replicas of themselves, and allowed these humanoid forms to evolve. Sounds like a vaguely familiar theory, eh?

I know, I know – you could see the end coming before I got there, but it was a cleverly concocted collection of conundrums, all fascinatingly detailed from a vivid imagination, and as a youngster, I enjoyed them. Yes, it was pure escapism - yet strangely, the stories also helped to open my mind to many other possible explanations of the origin and evolution of ‘the species’. The only sickener in the collection was the very end, when the Alien Creators’ identity was revealed as "Genetic Orienteering & Development", or something close – and of course, the very obvious acronym of their pompous title is …wait for it…G.O.D.! That identity was passed down to the planet’s inhabitants, and the rest was supposed to be gospel history. Oo-er, missus!

"Oh, what a load of silly-billy, sci-fi clap-trap!!" I hear all the zealots howl. Oh, really? How do you know - with absolute and total 200% conviction - that this exercise in a fictional guess-work/artistic interpretation of ‘Genesis’ isn’t what really happened thousands of years ago, hmm? Were any of us actually there when ‘creation’ happened? ‘Course not; even the Pope isn’t quite that old…

Well – it was a fun book for a young man… But - Shock! Horror! - What if that book had reached cult-status in the same way of The Da Vinci Code, hit the mainstream of publishing and sold millions, and ‘converted’ the weaker minds of parish populace? What would the churches have proclaimed then, with Christianity teetering on the brink of collapse as the worshippers left their chapels in droves, seeking ‘true’ enlightenment - whilst vicars twisted their knickers and squeezed their ankhs in angst, facing mass redundancy? Time for apostolic apoplexy, I suspect!!

Take things a stage further; what, I wonder, would the clergy have also thought of the next revelation that I fell upon a while later? Astoundingly – by some quaint quantum quirk - this ‘secret’ coincidentally framed the last of those short stories into ‘parallel’ context…sort-of…

It was during a very deep and spiritual conversation with a gathering of New Age Sages (‘Bikers’, to you and I!) that a casual remark was made – but the shocking effect was electric… palpable… there for all to feel! There we were, all gathered around a crackling camp fire in a circle of standing stones in deepest Wiltshire, surrounded by dense fog (oddly odorous of scorching leather, wacky-baccy and beer fumes), mellowed by measures of whisky and wine, gently mumbling our way around the trials and tribulations of life, the universe and the latest turbo-doodah superbikes, when ‘The Wise One’ (the chap with the longest beard and baldest crown) uttered the immortal words: "Did you all know that Jesus was half-alien?"

It was as if a bomb had been dropped in our midst! One moment we were all sitting up, leaning forward and listening closely to whispered words of intense wisdom, and the next, falling flat on our backs, peeling outwards like a fast-opening sunflower, beer cans spouting and frothing everywhere, bodies all over the place…

When we all finally stopped laughing and whooping long enough to listen further to the ‘Sage’, who was still sitting calmly waiting for the fuss to die down, he qualified his claim by stating that the Star Of Bethlehem was in fact the name of Jesus’ father’s spaceship, and that this errant alien took on human form as he beamed-down, had his wicked way with the Virgin Mary (having zapped Joseph with a stun-gun first), then returned nine months later to witness the birth of "Our Saviour" ‘from the hover’ in his spaceship, thus giving the not-so-wise men something of an aiming point to take their goodies. Oh, and Jesus’ daddy’s race had built our planet, but didn’t like the way we were running the show, so he decided to "install a new manager", so-to-speak. "Perhaps something went wrong in the translation," mumbled this great Sage, "’coz the baby ended up in a manger, instead!"

All true, I swear (though not on the bible!). A new ‘religion’ was born that night – once the hysterics had faltered into boozy snores… and believe it or not, there’s a large number of people from many walks of life who follow that (or very similar) thinking…but even they don’t know the Holy Son’s real identity – according to the latest polled theory of disenchanted ex-worshippers, that is.

You see, the absolute ‘truth’ – according to the ‘gospel’ of this poll – is that Jesus was in fact… a JEDI KNIGHT!! (Star Wars, George Lucas, 1977.)

Yes, folks – you did read that right: the claim is that yes, the Star of Bethlehem was a spaceship…but it was actually a Diplomatic Cruiser, owned by Senator Bail Organa of the planet Alderaan… and the rest of the claim states that the baby Jesus was in fact another off-spring of a powerful Jedi, left to the Virgin Mary by Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, for her to name as she wished and raise as her own son, thus keeping him secret from an unknown evil being…

How do I know this (theory) to be a supported ‘true’ faith? Take a look at the last UK National Census, and you will find that there are now over 36,000 people in these Hallowed Isles registered as ‘Jedi’ in the box marked ‘Religion’, turning their backs on whatever they followed before to take their newly chosen path of logic and reason according to the ‘gospel’ of George Lucas, creator of the "Star Wars" universe. Most are normal people who are just a touch fed-up with the world religious scene in general…but there are a few kookies amongst them who do interpret the fables in the Holy Bible in a different way to Christians. How else, these new Jedi claim, can the biblical ‘miracles’ be explained, except in Jedi terms?

Feed the 5,000? Simple, they say – a teaspoon-full of fish/bread gruel and a basic Jedi mind trick ("You are not hungry, my Padawan – sup this and move along. Next, please!").

Walking on water? Easy-peasy, they claim – "Use the force to levitate, my son."

Resurrection, after crucifixion? It has been seen that all good Jedi pass on to immortality – a simple ‘force’-push to roll away the stone as the body fades into the ether…or into the Shroud Of Turin, perhaps?

The list of (explicable) claims stretch on into infinity, it seems – and the ‘Chosen Ones’ (as these few call themselves) also claim the Jesus wasn’t the only Jedi in the bible – Moses was believed to be another! He is purported to have used ‘the force’ to hold back the waters, to name but one of his famous tricks (and, I see, he also had a motorbike, all those centuries ago: "Moses came down the hill on his Triumph"! Can’t be all bad, having a biblical biker…). Perhaps Jesus was a ‘Yoda’, after all…

So, with all these freshly-converted ‘Jedi’ in our midst, it can only be a matter of time until their opposition, the evil Sith Lords, put in an appearance…though I’m already harbouring serious doubts about the true identity of "Emperor" George ‘Dubya’ Bush; could he really be Darth [Hideous] Sidious in disguise? Or…

…Or was that the Pastor? Is that how he cast down flame and thunder upon all who dare stray from the indoctrinated Christian path? Was that ‘Force’ lightning that I saw crackling over the church, drawn from ‘The Dark Side’ when someone was audacious enough to challenge conventional Christian thinking? …

Uh-oh! Never mind the pyrotechnic postulations! Forget the apostolic apoplexy! There's an earthquake underfoot, storm clouds are gathering once more! It seems I've spoken the truth!The Pastor’s really going for it now - steam from the ears…eyes bulging on sprung stalks…flames from the mouth…thunderbolts from the fingertips…the heady odour of ozone (or something)…the fuses are popping like mad…he’s – he’s - eee-yuk! – melted, into a pungent, putrified sludge… Oh, whoops! Temper, temper…

Well, of course I’m "’Avin’ a larf", as they whine in BBC’s ‘Dead-Enders’! That’s the whole point of this article – a tongue-in-cheek repartee to the Pastoral proclamations over a work of fiction, intended merely to open the minds of our readers to the indisputable reality that nobody, but no-body, knows the total and absolute truth to our being and our evolution, no matter what dusty old books and piles of papyrus might claim.

There are some who say that the Holy Bible is the greatest work of fiction ever written (and we may never know the truth of that theory) – but let’s face it, ALL opinions and notions are equally valid [even apparently wild, fictional concepts] until history is proven unequivocally, one way or another. Come on, let’s face it – we’d be a dull society indeed, if we were all denied the imagination to create such escapism from tedium, routine and indoctrination; flex those chuckle-muscles and ‘live and let live’, I say…

My ‘umble apologies to the Pastor - I hope he won’t take personal offence at this ‘riposte’ – none was intended. I know him not from Adam or Eve – but I never could resist a little ecclesiastical excitation; it’s the devil in me! However, if I’m zapped by a massive lightning bolt when passing the Baptist Church at any time, I’ll take that to mean he’s got the ‘ump with me! I’ll know for sure, then, that he’ll have had an NHS ‘humorectomy’, without anaesthetic…

Having lit the blue touch paper, I’ll close my elevator doors and return to the burning basement…

Baz Elzebub.

(alias ‘Dartht Bleeda’ - May The Force Be With You, Always!)