She has 'quit' Christianity, as announced on her FB page. Yes, really. And, hell, I don't blame her. I renounced Catholicism at about 17 as an absurdly foolish path to any ultimate reality. A pastor has called her out to say that the people are the Church. I respond:
Dear Pastor,
I'm pretty sure Anne Rice understands the philosophies and underpinnings of the Church in general, and that's why she made that statement. Yes, the Church is the People, but every single division of Christianity has taken stories in a book and constructed this scaffolding around it in the shape it desires. And they have all declared: "There is no truth except through us."
And if you want to work through all that scaffolding you'll find people - mostly men - of the cloth that must aid you in that journey. By helping you climb the scaffold they built.
In Catholicism, the links are so disparate that you're 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon to get to the Pope who has the Red Phone. For the rest of them, it's ideas and thoughts as under-the-sink gradeschool crystal growth projects to build rules and implied judgments from the minds of men.
If you believe in God and want to make that connection a 1-on-1 call, there's NO Christian way to do it without being a part of that scaffold in some way. And within that scaffold, in many different factions of Christianity, lies a great deal of exclusion and hate that would never have crossed the mind of Jesus.
So shut up and let her write more great fiction.
Ricky
And I also saw that Prison Minister Marty Angelo said that Lindsay Lohan would've been way better off if she'd accepted Jesus as her personal savior and gone through religious-based treatment for her addictions.
On the light side, this is like saying gays can be cured through Jesus-ization. On the dark side, it's like a kid I had teaching tenth grade in NC, and on an essay question about Elie Wiesel's Night and how Faith played a role, he wrote me a one-sentence response: "If the Jews had just accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, then none of this would've happened." For those of you who missed that book, Night is a first-person recollection of surviving the death camps in WWII.
Christian healing only works for Christians. I don't think Lindsay has - or will - hit rock bottom. And if she does, she might do the addict dance I've seen so many times: Booze and coke to cigarettes, coffee, and Christ. And maybe then that treatment might work. But for now, Lindsay is a whackjob, out of her mind on excess and immortality and well on the way to the same grave that acted as the thoroughfare for so many other celebrities, except without the talent to pass into anything other than obscurity.
God save her soul.
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4 comments:
With over 30,000 denominations of Christianity and counting....I would say the Pastor's point is completely obliterated.
Anne Rice is a goof....she makes several good points about the intolerance inherant in the theology, and then fails to actually reject it in any meaningful way.
Why the need for the fairy tale to begin with? That's the question she should be asking herself.
The only part of that fairy tale that's cool is the crazy apocalyptic jazz. Giant monsters! Lakes of fire!
Jesus should have had a ray gun, though.
Getting Jesus-ified hasn't seemed to help Lindsey's father too much.
Lemmy - on the spot, as always.
Randal - hell yeah apocalypse (and a ray gun)
PC - true dat. I really don't think it has much effect on anyone who has anything else to turn to.
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