227. Quitting Christianity
Our Village Church on the Feast of St Anthony
I cannot begin this blog on quitting Christianity without mentioning the person who “coined” this phrase, namely best selling author of mostly steamy Gothic and by no means Christian novels, Anne Rice.
Her decision does not in the least perturb me, I understand it and I even condone it for the reason she gives for doing so has also been shared by that great leader Mahatma Gandhi who said:
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
And in some cases, no truer words have been spoken, the most arrogant, bigoted people I have found are among the “faithful” of the Catholic Church, even in high prominent places, on whom I have more than once slammed my clampers upon in blogging.
For someone as Anne Rice who left the Catholic Church at the age of 18, spent a lifetime writing steamy novels of Vampires that have nothing to do with Christian ethics, what I found astonishing was that the Author actually returned to the Church 10 years ago. That was for me the amazing factor, not that now she has left it, because surely, as she states “this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” existed then as it does now and no one is deceived that it will ever go away- not so long as the Church is made up of human beings.
I would not have understood her decision if she had been like one of the millions of real Christians, as Henry VIII’s Chancellor who rather than acclaim his King as head of the Church and renounce that human Pope full of warts and boils that Christ had placed as head of the Church, Thomas More chose to have his head chopped off and let it be placed on top of a Bridge for all London to see.
One has to remember, it is not us who choose Christ, but He who chooses us and He is always there holding out a hand to us... it is up to us to take it or not, irrespective of the demons that circulate around any Christian denomination.
At the end of the day the reality is that Christ does not work in a vacuum but through His Church- warts and all- otherwise He would not have established it- or die on a cross for it... take it or leave it.
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