Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? – Luke 15:4

Only someone who has a deep love or obsession for that sheep will, don’t you think? Well that was what God did- for us!

I was window shopping at a mall the other day and in a book sale, I saw this book by Paolo Coelho, a best selling author. The book was aptly titled, “The Zahir.”

“The Zahir” is a novel about love and obsession. The concept of the zahir was taken from Arabic tradition.

In Arabic, this word literally means visible, manifest or evident. In Muslim communities, the masses use the word for “beings or things which have the terrible power to be unforgettable, and whose image eventually drives people mad.”

In Coelho’s usage, the zahir is something or someone who (or which) when we experience (encounter or meet depending on whether it is a who or a which) cannot be erased from our system. The zahir becomes the reason we live. He (or it) becomes the center of our universe.

It was said that the first witness of a zahir was a Persian by the name of Luft Ali Azur.  In his encyclopedic work entitled “Temple of Fire,” Ali Azur relates that in a certain school in Shiraz there was a copper astrolabe “constructed in such a way that any man that looked upon it but once could think of nothing else.” It was a zahir.

In 1832, a man named Meadows Taylor was said to have recounted an account when on the outskirts of Bhuj, another place in Persia (now called Iran), he has heard the expression “verily he has looked upon the tiger.”  He was told that the reference was to a magic tiger that was the perdition of all who saw it, even from a great distance, for never afterward could a person stop thinking about it.”

Such is how deep love and obsession work. It consumes you. It makes you think of nothing else or no one else. It was like that deep love that God felt for us. He leaves heaven and all its glory and splendor (his ninety-nine?)to find us- the lost sheep in his pasture.

So as you may have realized by now, this blog isn’t about the Coelho novel. It is about finding the best and the greatest zahir there is in the multiverse (assuming the latest assertions about the existence of multiple and alternate universes is correct).

This greatest (and best) zahir I am talking about is a person. It is suppose to be a person. And his name is Jesus.

The Bible declares Jesus to be the Son of the living God (Matthew 16: 16) who was given by the Father as a gift for fallen humanity (John 3: 16). He is the demonstration of God’s love for sinners (Romans 5: 8).

The “Good Book” even says that “in him we move and live and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). Therefore, If we are to have a zahir in our life (and we should), that zahir has to be Jesus.

While all other obsessions are fatal, obsession with Jesus is healthy and will produce a better life for the obsessed.

Jesus’ own words in the gospel of John says, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

That life according to theologians is the “zoe” life. It is life in the realm of the spirit- a life that transcends even life in the flesh which we (and scientists) often call the “bios” life.

Obsession with this bios life creates all kinds of hedonistic leanings in us and we become victims of the lust of the eyes, of the lust of the flesh and of the pride of life. History is laden with concrete examples of this.

If there is a license in the Bible for obsession, it is obsession for Jesus. The language of Jesus, himself, about this is somewhat heavy.

In Matthew 10:37, Jesus Said; “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Later in verse 39, he further said, “he who has found his life will lose it; he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

You see, abundant life begins or ends by choosing or not choosing Jesus as the zahir of our life. The rich young ruler lost his, shall we lose ours too?

Before, it was Snow White from Fairy Land who had a bite from a poisoned apple. Nobody complained because hers is a make-believe story anyway and she survived through a Prince Charming’s kiss anyhow. Today, however, the world is witnessing an alarming phenomenon. Real people are munching poisoned brownies and are slowly dying as a result.

I came across a book recently that is both hailed and booed by critics- hailed by atheists and agnostics but booed by Bible believing enthusiasts. “The Da Vinci Code, ” a novel written by Dan Brown, recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the world today by Time Magazine, combined history, archaeology and theology in what was hailed to be the unveiling of the greatest conspiracy of the past 2000 years. It sold more than 70 million copies worldwide making Brown an international best selling author almost overnight.

Brown writes in the book that what the church (and the Bible) says about Jesus is wrong. This premise created an uproar among conservative evangelicals and full gospel churches worldwide. Bible believers demanded answers from their pastors and books branding Brown’s novel as heresy were quickly published.

Why is it so sensational, one may ask and the answer (if I may offer one) is because Brown in this novel challenged what people believed about Jesus and he seems to be succeeding in his pretense. By redefining the gospel story in the New Testament, he effectively created a niche in people’s faith.

What is the gospel according to Dan Brown?

Nothing but lies. He says that everything about Christianity is a lie.  For example, Dan Brown says in the book through one of his characters, the scholarly British royal historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, that Jesus was made a divine person in the Council of Nicea and insisted that he is married to Mary Magdalene and sired children- things that directly contradict the Bible. Brown even went on to say that the Bible as we know it today is a creation of the pagan emperor Constantine and that in it, all the things that point to the humanity of Jesus were omitted.

It is sad to note that Brown’s poisoned version of the gospel is munched casually by unsuspecting millions of people in the same way that they munch their brownies in their porches at home. The result is not their dislike of the church. The poison works in such a way that the person’s faith collapses.

While Brown claims that he wrote what is historically true in his book, his is a distorted version of the truth. His is a poisoned browny flavored with chocolate, milk and sugar- the perfect bait for the famished and the seeker for truth. It is a subtle deception we must not yield to.

Jesus was never proclaimed as divine only in the Council of Nicea as Brown likes to point out. The Bible clearly pictured him as divine. He is called God and Lord in the New Testament numerous times. These New Testament texts pre-date the Council of Nicea.

Jesus was never married according to the Bible. Even the Gnostic gospels which Brown used to build his argument never contained a hint of such an absurd idea. He read it wrong (or shall I say, his scholarly historian character read it wrong). His premise may well be regarded as borrowed from Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1951 which was adapted to film by Martin Scorsese in 1988.

The idea that the pagan emperor Constantine is the creator of the Bible as we know it today is completely untrue. The canon of the Scriptures was completed probably between 393-397 AD. This date is approximately 56- 60 years after his death. We simply don’t know how Brown came up with his idea and he won’t discuss the matter anyway.

Simply put, the burden of proof lies with Brown’s fantastic claims because it is in fact his camp where we see the evidences are lacking.

To deprive people of their faith is a serious crime. It is faith that makes people want to live on, hold on and dream on. It is the only thread that makes them alive.

Take away faith and you also take away the ability to love and to hope, the ability to dream and to make things happen. It is not enlightenment as Brown would have us believe. Munching his poisoned browny equates to nothing but suicide.