W.W.J.D.? Does anyone know?

This weekend "The Da Vinci Code" opened in theaters amidst a cloud of controversy. The portrait of Jesus that the story presents is a topic of debate and angst. (Stop reading if you've somehow missed the great "secret" around which the story revolves.) Dan Brown's captivating mystery/thriller is fueled by the hypothesis that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, they had children and descendents of Jesus are scattered around the world today.\nSome Christians are outraged by this "blasphemous" suggestion. Francis Arinze, a Catholic Cardinal, demanded that Christians stop at nothing to destroy this notion and recommended a lawsuit against the author. Other leaders have urged boycotts of the film (and book) said to be full of "anti-Christian lies."\nShouldn't these folks be happy about the message? The same conservative religious voices loudly preach about the "sanctity of marriage" and protect heterosexual marriage from the "evil" gays and lesbians. If Jesus had been married with children in a "holy" heterosexual relationship, it would be a gold mine for supporting their argument about marriage. These leaders should count their blessings and be happy that no one thinks Jesus was gay ...\n... Too late. A theater production titled "Corpus Christi" already hints at that possibility, along with speculation regarding Jesus' relationship with some of the disciples. Of course this fabulous plot twist in the life and times of Jesus comes under even heavier attack than "The Da Vinci Code."\nWhile we fight about whether Jesus was single or married, celibate or sexually active, gay or straight or pansexual or asexual, at least we can all agree that Jesus was a good ol' "white bread" Caucasian with fair, flowing, blondish-brown hair, right?\nNot exactly ... logic tells us that Jesus looked nothing like the WASPy images most Christians hold dear -- the man came from the Middle East and the odds of him being fair skinned with long hair blowing in the wind are slim at best. \nYet, we certainly don't see the powers that be rushing to change the pictures of Jesus over the altar. If Christians want accuracy in their movies, why didn't we hear mass criticism when Mel Gibson cast a western European, white Jesus in "Passion of the Christ?"\nIt seems that a hundred pages of Biblical text don't offer a concrete, infallible image of the namesake of a religion. And considering that there is almost no mention of the middle 20 years or so of Jesus' life, it's safe to say the particular details about this man are woolly at best.\nThe point to be made here is not whether an ancient man we call Jesus was definitively this or that. I certainly wasn't around to see and neither were any of the other staunch defenders of a specific and narrow image of Jesus. \nBrown writes in his novel "the Church should not be allowed to tell us what notions we can and can't entertain." \nOnce we get stuck defending a rigid, symbolic ideal that we claim to be FACT, it seems to undermine the whole notion of FAITH.