Leaving Christianity, Following Christ

As you may have heard by now, Anne Rice recently announced on her Facebook that she is finished with Christianity. Here’s what she has to say about it:

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

She still, however, says she remains “committed to Christ.” Rice is just done with the religion of Christianity. And I can certainly understand where she’s coming from.

When I read the words of Christ, my heart overflows with hope. Here’s Jesus, God as man, going to the broken, downtrodden, outcast people and saying that the Kingdom of God is for them. Here’s Jesus preaching a way of living that’s a complete 180 from the ways of the world. Here’s Jesus laying down His very life so that the broken can be healed, and the outcast can enter God’s Kingdom. Jesus makes me want to leave everything behind, and follow Him.

Now, when I compare all that with the way Christians act sometimes, I can’t help but wonder what went wrong. How did we go from “He lives by the sword dies by the sword” to “Let’s take out Hugo Chavez?” Why is the Prosperity Gospel still popular even though the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil? Why do some Christians spend so much energy preventing gay couples from marrying, yet turn a blind eye towards poverty?

A few weeks ago I had a faith crisis. I didn’t know what I believed in anymore. I still loved Jesus, but I became fed up with religion. So I had to sort of forget about anything anyone had ever taught me about God, and read the Bible for myself. And the funny thing is my faith suddenly grew! Jesus became real to me again. So maybe we all need to leave religion behind in order to find true faith.