A Pastoral Response to Anne Rice quitting Christianity (Mark Driscoll)

The Washington Post ^ | 8/11/2010 | Mark Driscoll

[SnakeDoctor]

Anne Rice is in a season that many, if not all, Christians experience: the great joy of coming to personally embrace the love, forgiveness, and new life that Jesus offers is then followed by the troubles and trials of learning the teachings of the Bible and living with fellow Christians. Truthfully, both are difficult.

Every Christian struggles, to varying degrees, with different parts of the Bible because they call us to repent of beliefs we formerly held and ways in which we formerly behaved. Anne Rice struggles with the Bible's opposition to homosexuality and its teachings on gender roles. She also struggles with the teachings of the Catholic Church on birth control and politics, and many Protestants would likely agree with her in principle.

Additionally, every Christian has seasons in which he or she struggles to lovingly live in community with fellow Christians as the church. This is because some Christians are so self-righteous, mean spirited, and just plain annoying that even their pastors are occasionally tempted to preach in one of those "Jesus, Please Save Me from Your Followers" T-shirts.

The problem for Anne Rice is that, unlike other Christians who get to work out their faith struggles in private, she is a public figure who decided to write, "In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian" on her Facebook page, which only invites the kind of vicious online responses that pushed her to make the statement in the first place. To her credit, though, she was clear that she still loves Jesus Christ as her God and wants an ongoing relationship with him.

[RnMomof7]

Mark Driscoll is a good pastor, He is offering grace to someone he does not know or pastor.

Is she really a Christian or has she built a jesus that she likes ignoring the biblical one that will actually stand in judgment. We do not know.

I do agree that we need to pray for this hurting mother.. no one wants to think of a beloved child burning in hell for eternity

[fish hawk]

He said it in a joking manner. He was a true Conservative thinking pastor and a brilliant Bible teacher. He died at a young age from a heart attack while out snorkeling in the ocean here on Maui. He was also the Chaplain of Maui Memorial Hospital and tow old folks homes and the Prison. In his younger days, after WW2 he was a Nazi hunter. Spoke perfect German and had the Aryan look which helped him nail a few of them who were in hiding. A true Hero in my books and was honored to serve with him in the Chaplaincy here on Maui.