Rice for Easter

Apropos my Friday post about Anne Rice and her Jesus books, here's part of an essay she contributed that same day to OnFaith, a joint website of the Washington Post and Newsweek. If you prefer, you can read the entire essay here. Happy Easter:

Anne Rice
My Trust in My Lord

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.

Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.

And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.
. . . .
As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.

Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.

Anne Rice is the best-selling author of 27 books, including "The Vampire Chronicles" and "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt."

35 Years Later

In 1972, my best friend Gary and I were enjoying summer break between our freshman and sophomore years of high school. Earlier in June, he had gone off to Texas to attend a conference sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ called Explo '72.

Shortly after he got back, Gary guest-led our church youth group. Normally rather neurotic, he now seemed strangely at peace. He was wearing a big cross around his neck, and he told us, "While I was in Texas, I became a Christian." This made no sense to me, as both of us were full, confirmed members of our church, and had been for several years. If we weren't already Christians, what were we? Or, more to the point, what now was I?

Gary went on to share with us a little booklet called the Four Spiritual Laws. It summarizes the message of the Bible as: God loves us and has good plans for us; but placing our desires ahead of His (= sin) has separated us from Him and we can never be good enough to work our way back; Jesus, who was God, paid our penalty in our place; we can receive forgiveness and a relationship with God through Jesus, just by asking for it.

There was nothing in that booklet that was new to me. What was new, however, was that I had never heard all these pieces put together in such a way that I understood the story. Things clicked, in both mind and heart.

So when I got home that evening, I sat down in the living room and told God I wanted to be a Christian. I had thought I already was, but seeing that evening what the Bible had to say, I realized I wasn't. I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my life. Deep inside me, I felt that He did exactly that. And I felt the same way the next morning when I woke up.

That was hardly the end of the story, but it was the beginning.

June 28, 1972.

Explo '72 attracted 80,000. The final Christian rock concert, which was pivotal in launching contemporary Christian music, drew almost 200,000. I wasn't there, but the music is still ringing in my ears.

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Who Said It?

Can you guess which presidential candidate gave this speech last week? (I've edited it heavily to try to avoid giving undue hints.)

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It's great to be here. I've been speaking to a lot of churches recently, so it's nice to be speaking to one that's so familiar. Clearly, the past 50 years have not weakened your resolve as faithful witnesses of the gospel. And I'm glad to see that.

It's been several months now since I announced I was running for president. In that time, I've had the chance to talk with Americans all across this country. And I've found that no matter where I am, or who I'm talking to, there's a common theme that emerges. It's that folks are hungry for change - they're hungry for something new.

But I also get the sense that there's a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond any single cause or issue. It seems to me that each day, thousands of Americans are going about their lives - dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets, trying to kick a cigarette habit - and they're coming to the realization that something is missing. They're deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long road toward nothingness.

And this restlessness - this search for meaning - is familiar to me. I was not raised in a particularly religious household. It wasn't until after college that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma. I wanted to be part of something larger. I learned that everyone's got a sacred story when you take the time to listen. [The people at church] saw that I knew the Scriptures and that many of the values I held and that propelled me in my work were values they shared. But I think they also sensed that a part of me remained removed and detached - that I was an observer in their midst.

And slowly, I came to realize that something was missing as well - that without an anchor for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity Church. And I heard Reverend Wright deliver a sermon. And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn't suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.

But my journey is part of a larger journey - one shared by all who've ever sought to apply the values of their faith to our society. It's a journey that takes us back to our nation's founding. So doing the Lord's work is a thread that's run through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America means faith should have no role in public life.

Question 1: Democrat, Republican, or Independent?

Question 2: Who is it?

You can find the answer here, and read the entire speech without edits, if you like.

And none of this should be taken as my endorsement of the candidate. In fact, I'm almost certain I wouldn't vote for this person. But it's nice to hear this kind of talk in the public square.