My cousin alerted me to the fact that Anne Rice (the author) had renounced her Christianity on her facebook page. She actually quit Christianity the movement but considers herself a follower of Christ the figure. Her re-conversion ten years ago, which seemed genuine and was apparently to the Roman Catholicism of her youth, caused quite a stir, followed by her Jesus fiction. So what to make of her "de-conversion"?
First, she laments that being a Christian was too hard. Well, it's not supposed to be easy. From the very get-go Christians were murdered for the faith, and still are in some parts of the world. It wouldn't be worth it if it was easy. This is where fellow Christians come in, and maybe they let Rice down. But to complain that it's too hard sounds like you're not trying hard enough yourself.
Second, the two examples she cites for finally pushing her to quit Christianity are pretty extreme: a rock band and the Westboro Baptist Church, both of whom really do hate gays. But are they representative? Of course not. Then why cite them? Rice knows better than that, just as she knows that Usama bin Laden doesn't represent Islam. I smell a cop-out.
It is a tough thing, and I don't want to indict the poor lady for struggling. You pray for her, as all good Christians do. Hopefully in her own prayer she will discern the Lord's will regarding His church on earth.
That is so interesting and quite sad. I just recently read her book Out of Egypt, which was notably inaccurate on a few different accounts in the bible. I understand she was trying to write for her usual audience too, but her stretches were considerably disturbing coming from someone who claimed to "know" the Christian faith so well. Her author's note in the book was fascinating and very convincing of rediscovered beliefs. She seemed to have done extensive research to write the book, which made it even more difficult for me to get over Jesus having a step-brother through Joseph and a completely different reason for the finding in the temple, which had nothing to do with Christ's teaching.
ReplyDeleteThe worst part, for me, isn't so much that she misrepresented parts of Christ's life, but that she completely gave up being a "Christian," because it was too difficult. It sends a horrible message to all of her followers that if you don't to it "right" then you can't do it at all. I guess that was probably a lot of pressure from the media as well as her agnostic family.
Regardless, you are certainly right that Anne Rice and her family need our prayers...