Anne Rice…bless her heart. In case you missed the controversy, Mrs. Rice publicly “quit being a Christian” several weeks back. She wrote on Facebook: “I remain committed to Christ as always…[but] it’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group.” She says she refused to be anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-Democrat, anti-secular humanism, anti-science, and anti-life. It was such big news even Leonard Pitts took a break from his usual race-baiting, conservative bashing to revel in her departure (DRC August 10).
In case you don’t know Anne Rice, she was into bi-sexual vampires long before vampires were sexy. A former student at Denton’s TWU, she wrote a series of novels following her best-selling Interview with a Vampire. She experienced a dramatic “conversion” ten years ago which she chronicles in Out of the Darkness. For full disclosure, I have read two of her fictitious books about Jesus’ life and ministry which I thoroughly enjoyed. She’s quite a talented author.
Mrs. Rice admittedly came to the church with an agenda. When the church did not buy into this agenda, she left. The question is, did she ever truly convert to Christianity? Jesus warned us two-thousand years ago that the Bible’s message would be offensive to the world. Heck, it offends Christians, too! The reason for the affront is the mirror-like aspect of God’s word, revealing our deepest flaws and all our ugliness apart from God. The Bible calls us to change our thinking. It calls us to change our actions. That’s where we get the term “conversion.”
In other words, we come to God on his terms. We don’t force him to change his tenets, nor do we get pick and choose which beliefs we want to accept as true. God doesn’t have (or need) an editor.
Imagine a liberal signing up for the local Tea Party and then getting upset when the platform includes cutting government spending. It’s laughable. Signing the Tea Party rolls doesn’t make you a fiscal conservative, and joining the church doesn’t make you a convert.
Is Anne correct? Are there some quarrelsome, hostile, and disputatious folks in the church? Sure…and some of them are pastors! I once had an ethics professor in grad school that was the meanest, most unfair professor I ever had for a course. The irony was not lost on me, but I somehow was able to avoid jumping to the conclusion that ALL ethics professors are unethical.
I’ve heard it said the church is less of a home for saints than it is a haven for sinners…or as I like to tell folks who reject the church because of the hypocrites they find – we’ve got room for one more.
We come to God on his terms, not our own. We don’t always live up to his terms (hence the apparent hypocrisy), but we try. Mr. Pitts, in his observations on this controversy, falsely argues that the church is dying. He says that a new “openness” is needed from churches to ensure the future of “organized religion.” In essence he’s suggesting the church lower its standards and kill two birds with one stone. Lower moral standards mean less moral failure and therefore less hypocrisy. Also, lower standards mean the church will no longer run off enlightened, important people like Anne Rice. But what Mr. Pitts doesn’t understand, and what Mrs. Rice has learned, is that the Bible says what it says. You take it or leave it. Anne Rice left it. I’ll take it.
Brett McCracken, in the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote: “If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.”
I know Anne Rice loves Jesus. She’s written about him quite reverently. But if she wants to be his follower, she will have to accept more than just the “idea” of Jesus – she’ll have to convert to his way of thinking.
