Called Out of Darkness

Subtitled A Spiritual Confession, author Anne Rice relates her growing up with, rejection of and return to God.

Rice made her mark in the vanguard of transgressive genre fiction, primarily vampire fiction. In typical postmodern fashion her work forgoes questions of morality, dealing with themes of spiritual and emotional alienation. Stylistically Called Out of Darkness draws you in with the same atmospheric, sensuous prose of her pagan corpus, but here, she who was once alienated from God has been reconciled by Christ’s physical body through death.

The book is fascinating and definitely worth the time to read if you like spiritual biography. But keep in mind, her conversion is recent and some of her views fall outside of what we consider evangelical orthodoxy. It’s difficult to know exactly how to relate to her.

On the one hand, we could say that she doesn’t seem to return to God so much as she seems to return to the Catholic Church. Her conceptions of Christian spirituality have much in common with the Medieval Catholic mystics – she has an admirable desire for intimacy with God, but also a near obsession with the Stigmata. (Catholic tradition holds that certain saints achieved such an intimate union with Christ that they were branded with the Stigmata, the five wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion.) Unfortunately, her worldview also holds a sharp secular / sacred divide, which isn’t really consistent with her otherwise firm commitment to conservative Roman Catholicism.

On the other hand, soon after her return to church she recognized that true conversion meant more than just faithful churchgoing. She knew that she was still holding something back from God and felt a deep need to be born again into a distinctively Christian life. Eventually she decided that she would never write another word unless it had to with Jesus. As a result, she steeped herself in the New Testament and NT scholarship and came out of it with a staunchly conservative view of Scripture. In her own words:

It isn't simply a matter of finding skeptical New Testament scholarship so poor, so shallow, so irresponsibly speculative, or so biased. That has indeed been the case. But something else, something infinitely more positive, has been at work in my spiritual journey since 2002 --

That "something else" is the profound implications that flow out of the Incarnation. Rice finds New Testament skeptics helpful in the questions that they ask, but she utterly rejects the idea that a projected mythos and church tradition grew up around a great teacher. Instead, she’s convinced that the Jesus of Scripture and the Jesus of history are one and the same.

Rice grew up in a blue-collar New Orleans neighborhood. The memories attached to her childhood make for the richest descriptions in the book, and clearly these early, unfiltered experiences of life with God cultivate her later spiritual conceptions. She remained faithful through her school years, though it was during this time that the seeds of her crisis were sown.

The edges began to crack as Rice entered college. In her interactions with people outside the church, outside the faith, she recognized that her sanitized, Catholic education left her far behind her peers. They were well-versed in the advances of the modern world, but having grown in a controlled environment that banned certain books and movies, that curtailed behavior with the threat of Hell -- She realized that the Catholic Church refused to enter into or interact with the world outside the church. Her upbringing hadn’t prepared her to live in the modern world. Her church, and therefore she, didn’t belong in the world they lived in.

Her abandoning of the church was not precipitated by a traumatic event or a spiritual or emotional crisis. Hers was an intellectual crisis. She says:

The church had become for me anti-art and anti-mind. No longer was there the blending of the aesthetic and the religious as there had been throughout my childhood. . . .

There just couldn't be a God. A God would never have made a church so unnatural and so narrow, and so seemingly fragile -- vulnerable to information, that is -- as the Catholic Church. People who believed in God believed in churches, and churches told you lies. Not only did they tell you lies, they made you tell lies. They taught you how to tell those lies when you were a little child.

I had grown up telling lies for the Catholic Church. Let me give one example. If those outside the church criticized the Inquisition and its torture of heretics or Jews, we had a standard Catholic answer, and it was this: The Inquisition was only going along with the times. Indeed the Inquisition never really executed anyone. It was the secular state that did the executing.

That, I think, is a first-rate Catholic lie.

But Catholics of my time were taught quite a number, and there goal was always the same -- to gloss over the failings or corruption of the church and bring the subject of the discussion back to the church's perfection.

As I lost faith in God and his church, these many lies seemed proof to me that I was moving away from falsehood and into truth.

Her Christian education failed to give her an honest assessment of history and served as a kind of ecclesial propaganda. As a result, she felt that athieism was more intellectually honest and a more courageous way to face the world.

Rice’s return to faith follows a path marked by the kinds of “coincidences” that could only have been Providentially ordered. The story itself is hers to tell so here I’ll only point out that her conversion resulted from a growing sense of estrangement, a deep sense of spiritual alienation (remember the themes of her work – 28 books’ worth) that came to a head 38 years after she left the church and God.

Finally, I’d mention that the last chapter of the book is the most disappointing. Here Rice illustrates her unfortunate commitment to a secular / sacred divide. When I closed the book I felt a great desire to write her a letter (and I still may) rejoicing with her in her new life in Christ, commending her for her courage to be so public with her faith, and gently asking her to reexamine the basis for this dichotomy that she supposes.

If God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1-2), if “heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it” belongs to God (Deut 10:14), if the Word that became flesh was with God and was God and all things were made through him (John 1:1-3, 14), if all the earth is his (Ex 19:5, Ps 24:1-3, Ps 50:10-12) and all things were created through him and for him (Col 1:16) and he is the heir of all things (Heb 1:2-4), if he is appointed judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42, 2 Tim 4:1, Heb 13:4, Rev 19:11), if every knee shall bow to him as sovereign Lord (Is 45:23, Rom 14:11, Phil 2:10) – if all this is true, does it not follow that the whole creation falls under the authority of its Creator? The witness of Scripture seems to indicate that there is no secular / sacred divide. If God created it, he has a claim on it, the right to define its purpose and the authority to pronounce judgment on its conformity to that purpose.

Notes on the Remainder of Mark 3

In Mark 3:7-35 we have four short sections that highlight the whirlwind of activity and confusion that has come to surround Jesus. At first glance, the vignettes seem to have little to do with one another: crowds swarm Jesus, a list of the twelve disciples, an encounter with the scribes, and Jesus’ enigmatic comment about his family relations. But looking deeper, a thread emerges that holds the four individual passages together to form a single unit and leads nicely into the teaching section that follows.


Verses 7-12 set the tone, a chaotic, threatening, circus-like atmosphere. Great crowds of people surround Jesus, some coming almost 100 miles to see him in Galilee. (Imagine walking from Columbia to Spartanburg for the chance of meeting a man.) Mark mentions that people come from Galilee, a region containing the northernmost reaches of Israel; he specifically mentions Judea (the Southern Kingdom) and Jerusalem, home of the Temple; and he names Idumea, a region containing the southernmost reaches of Israel. Galilee, Judea and Idumea are key locations that essentially mark out the borders of the land of Canaan promised to Abraham, occupied by Joshua’s generation and secured by David. Geographically, Mark shows us that people are coming from the farthest reaches of the Davidic Kingdom to see Jesus. They are even leaving Jerusalem, the Holy City on a Hill, the Temple Mount, to see him. Finally, we should note that Mark mentions Tyre and Sidon, two cities outside the boundaries of Israel. Mark is giving us a clue about Jesus’ broader mission. The true King has arrived on the scene, and his true Kingdom is too big for the old borders to contain it.

However, we also see something of the relationship between Jesus and the crowd. When they heard all that he was doing they came to him and pressed in on him, following him even as he withdrew with his disciples, pursuing him so closely that Jesus feared that he would be crushed by them. No doubt there are those in the crowd who come to Jesus in faith, but Mark’s language gives the sense that most of those who come do so while making demands of Jesus or to simply see the spectacle of his works.


Contrast 3:7-12 with verses 13-21. Finally Jesus is able to retreat from the crowds. Instead of being followed and pressed in upon, Jesus chooses “those whom he desired.” He takes hold of them and separates them from the crowd (the same way God takes hold of us and separates us from the crowds when he calls into a life of worship. Thus, our Sunday morning service begins with the call to worship.) He renames them (a kind of transformation), naming them “apostles”, apostelous in the Greek, derived from the verb aposteleo, meaning “I send.” In renaming them, Jesus transforms them into sent ones and consecrates them for a special task, “that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.”

(Likewise, through the process of conviction, confession, repentance, forgiveness and cleansing [1 John 1:9] we are transformed for the purpose of being with God. In our service we follow confession / assurance with ascension in the Lord’s presence, that is the bringing of an offering and talking with him in prayer. We are then further transformed through the preaching of the Word and consecrated by it with the task of going out and incorporating it into our day-to-day lives, sent ones from God that we may bear witness to his goodness, mercy and redemption.)

After this brief retreat with his friends, Jesus returns to his family, who promptly questions his sanity.


In verses 22-30 the scribes’ accusation sounds remarkably similar to that of Jesus’ family, if not in the particular charge, at least in the general sense that both parties betray that they know exactly nothing about who Jesus really is. On the one hand it’s amazing that either should be so off. Had Joseph and Mary never spoken about those incredible events that surrounded Jesus’ birth? Shouldn’t his family, upon seeing his miracles and power, say with wonder, “It’s true!” And the scribes – they were teachers of the Law, people who were trained and accepted as authorities in what the Scriptures say. But they had obscured what the Scriptures say. Hidden it and distorted it with self-made religion and tradition. Those Scriptures that they prided themselves in knowing so well were pointing them to Jesus; and now, when they come face-to-face with him, instead of hailing him as the Messiah from God, they accuse him of colluding with Satan. They weren’t simply confused. They weren’t just off the mark, misinformed, or mistaken. They looked God in the face and told him that he belongs in Hell.

More precisely, they saw the work of the Holy Spirit and called it the work of Satan. It wasn’t only that they blasphemed, made a rash statement out of sinful anger and malice. It was that, with that 180° perversion of the truth - a truth that they had tasted a hundred times over in their studies – they declared their final, unequivocal, irreversible rejection of Christ. As scribes they had tasted the goodness of the word of God, they had drunk the rain and they had born only thorns and thistles (Heb 6:4-8).

Jesus points out the foolishness of their assertion and then pronounces judgment on them.


Now we get to verses 31-35, the end of the thread that runs through these passages and binds them to the teaching section that opens chapter 4. If we were going to toss out the divisions and section headings that come in our study Bibles and replace them with our own, we might title Mark 3:7-30 “The Different Relationships People Have to Jesus.” Mark has masterfully given us the feel of what Jesus’ life was like at this point in his ministry: crowded, harried, somewhat chaotic and threatening. To paint the picture, Mark uses events that center around people and their relations to Jesus. He then anchors the unit with an incident involving Jesus’ actual relations, begging the question, “What is it that marks a person as one who is in a right relationship with Jesus?”

“Whoever does the will of God,” that person is in Jesus’ family.

And then Jesus began to teach.

Closing Thoughts on Mark 2:1-3:6

In Mark 2:18-22, Jesus is confronted about fasting and he gives (explicitly) two reasons why his disciples don’t fast: 1) They don’t fast like John’s disciples because everything represented by John (the Old Covenant types and shadows) is fulfilled in Jesus (the substance); and 2) They don’t fast like John’s disciples because those forms represented by John (Old Covenant ceremonies, rites, rituals) are inadequate for “containing” New Covenant realities. If the Pharisees represent merit based religiosity, I think Jesus essentially ignores that part of the question, implying that what the Pharisees do is so far off the mark that it’s not even a legitimate part of the equation.

Obviously Jesus is answering a specific question at a given time and his answer is meant to press his hearers to follow this transition from Old to New. So in one manner, being Christian rather than a Jewish proselyte is itself an application of Jesus’ teaching.

To draw the Old forms / New reality principle out a little further, it is also inappropriate to carry on with a system of sacrifice, either atoning or penitential. That may go without saying for some, but others still feel a need to “do penance,” or to devote themselves to spiritual exercise as “extra sacrifice.” We often object to such ideas from a systematic theology perspective: Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice, which of course is true.

Here in Mark, Jesus gives us another way to think of it. The Old forms of the sacrificial system were ritualistic rather than relational. Animal sacrifice, as well as personal sacrifice, is too impersonal to adequately accommodate the New Covenant reality, namely, that we have a direct, intimate relationship with God the Father. Certainly we should be sorry for our sin. Certainly we should repent. And spiritual exercise may do well to help us more fully embrace our relationship with God. But we don’t need to “make things right” with our Father. That’s already been done “by Christ’s physical body through death” (Col 1:22).

Rather than paying penance, we already have the freedom to walk away from our mistress (repent from the sin into which we were tempted) and enjoy the intimate companionship of our Beloved. The Old Covenant forms pointed to this reality, but now the reality is here.

And so, in our ceremony, our order of worship at Covenant Presbyterian Church (Columbia, SC), we have the call to come to God followed by the confession of sin and assurance of grace. We respond to grace by acknowledging that we belong to God: Our offering given as a token of ourselves reminds us that we belong to God, not as property, but in a familial way. Then we receive instruction from our Father (think of Proverbs chapters 1-10 and the deep concern the father shows for his son in giving instruction). And finally, we, like Jesus’ disciples, commune with our Beloved, the Bridegroom present with us in a special way in the Lord’s Supper. Hence, our New Covenant forms carry with them an intimacy and joy that the Old forms only pointed to.

The pattern of our worship service is meant also to be the pattern of our lives the other 167 hours of the week. Following Jesus’ teaching in Mark 2:18-22, while there may be appropriate times for sorrow, in general the Christian life is not one of fasting but of feasting, every day.

May the remainder of your week be one of feasting with our Father and our truest Love, our Lord Jesus.

Notes on Mark 2:1-3:6

In chapter 1 Mark established a plethora of rich facts about Jesus’ identity. Here in chapter 2 we’ll begin to see the inevitable tension between Jesus and the religious elite of his day. Mark carries this tension into the first section of chapter 3 where it culminates in the Pharisees’ decision to destroy Jesus.

An Annotated Outline:

I. Jesus has power over the individual condition, both physical and spiritual (vv. 1-12)
A. Jesus forgives sins, claiming power over the individual spiritual condition. As an aside, we see here an early allusion to Jesus’ role as sacrificial lamb. Jesus forgives the man’s sins, but there is no forgiveness for sin without the shedding of blood (Heb 9:22).
B. Jesus heals the body, demonstrating in an observable way that, if he says it, he can do it, an obvious indication that he is the God who makes things happen with a Word.
C. The men lowered their friend through the roof. Remember that Middle-eastern dwellings were typically built so that the flat roof was like another room in the house. Families slept there during the hottest weather, they worked there, etc. This was no flimsy construction, nor was it an easy task. They were desperate to get their friend near Jesus.

II. Jesus came to call sinners (which is awful good news to those who feel the weight of their sin, 13-17)
A. Jesus called Levi
B. Levi followed Jesus
C. Jesus fellowshipped with Levi at table
D. Note Jesus’ pointed dig, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Spiritually speaking, is anybody really well? Jesus is challenging the Pharisees to examine themselves and have the humility to be honest about their need. The big question is this: Will they admit that they are sick, repent from their prescribed, self-invented religious formulas / ideals and come to Jesus? Will they continue to assert their own spiritual wellness and remain enemies of God, or will they scramble to be near Jesus like those guys who came through the roof? Certainly they are near him in proximity, but their hearts are far from him. They want nothing to do with him.

III. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Covenant and initiates a new paradigm (18-22)
A. John represents the old paradigm – longing for God’s salvation
B. The Pharisees represent self-made religious formulas – “deserving” God’s salvation
C. Jesus is God’s salvation, and so his disciples celebrate.
D. The old forms are inadequate for the New Covenant life. Or to put it another way, the shadow can’t contain the substance. A question about fasting provokes Jesus' wineskin illustration. OT fasting came in two basic modes: 1) abstaining from food in the midst of intense emotion (see Hannah's response to her barenness and her tormentor, 1 Samuel 1); 2) religious fasting, the primary fast prescribed as part of the Day of Atonement ritual (Lev 16), but there are also examples of unprescibed fasting with religious significance (see 2 Sam 12). During the inter-testamental period, fasting became a way to acquire spiritual merit. The Pharisaical tradition grows out of this inter-testamental scheme. Jesus is asked, Why don't your disciples fast like those of John, and why not like those of the Pharisees? I think Jesus ignores the question regarding the Pharisees: Jesus' disciples don't need to score spiritual points with him. He answers the question about John's disciples with two reasons. "Why don't my disciples fast like John's? For two reasons. 1) everything John represents, the Old Covenant promises about a coming Messiah has come true. I am the Messiah, the Bridegroom. Now is not the time for mourning, but for celebration. 2) Everything John represents, the Old Covenant religious forms, were only foreshadowing elements, now that the real thing is here, those forms are no longer sufficient.

IV. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath (23-28)
A. Jesus was with his disciples; they were nourished with grain (an image of broken bread?)
B. The Sabbath is made for man, not to burden him with regulations, but to refresh him (Ex 20:12).
V. Jesus brings life where self-made religion brings death (3:1-6)
A. This incident takes place in the synagogue, the local place for spiritual instruction and corporate worship apart from the Temple. At the synagogue people gathered to hear the Scriptures read and expounded. In other words, they came here to encounter the Word of Life. On this day, they gather with Jesus, the Living Word, the Word made flesh.
B. Note the contrasts:
Jesus v. Pharisees
To save life v. to kill
Compassion v. hardness of heart

Mark Chapter 1

In my small group at church we've begun reading through and discussing Mark's Gospel. Below you'll find an annotated outline of Mark 1 that I worked up following our first meeting. I thought I might include these and subsequent notes because I believe that it's only in a right relationship with God (the Maker of humanity, not a divine light within humanity) that we come into the fullness of what it means to be human.

Hopefully the formatting isn't too cumbersome and text dense. And hopefully these entries will provoke a broader conversation that will lead to richer experiences with Scripture as well as with the God who is revealed in it.


Notes on Mark 1, an annotated outline:

I. Introduction: Jesus is the Anointed One (Christ) from God (vv. 1-8)
A. Jesus’ present arrival is linked to OT prophecy

B. John is an OT prophet in the manner of Elijah (indicated by dress and diet)

C. The OT (testament / covenant) events “prepare the way” for the New (“one is coming after me . . .”)


II. Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT (9-15)
A. Just as Elijah anointed Elisha who received a “double portion” of the former’s spirit (2 Kings 2), so John anoints Jesus; from the lesser / the shadow (John) emerges the greater / the reality (Jesus).

B. Heaven was torn open, the Spirit descended and “a voice came from heaven . . .” Foreshadows Mark 15:38-39 (making for a nice pair of bookends, or an inclusio, for the book). The Spirit coming down is the fulfillment of the core promise of the covenant – “I will be their God and they will be my people:” God (the Spirit) is coming to be with His people in an intimate way, beginning with the Firstborn (se Col 1:15, Ro 8:29).

C. Jesus is the new (true) Israel – driven into the wilderness by God the Spirit, just as God drove the people of Israel from the edge of Canaan back into the wilderness. Jesus stays one day for each year.

D. John is arrested: the OT era, the era of types, fades. Jesus makes the kingdom proclamation: the NT era, the era of fulfillment, is initiated. That may sound awfully Dispensational, but here’s the primary difference. In the Covenantal view, the Old gives way to the New; the New overtakes the Old. The types and shadows give way for their fulfillment. Think of the stars and the sun. The stars give light at night, but when the sun rises they “give way” to its greater light. They don’t go away; their lesser light is overtaken by the greater light. The Dispensationalist (who might use the same illustration differently) sees the Old as being interrupted by the New, not necessarily overtaken by it. Pointing primarily to Romans 11 (along with other key texts), they typically see a coming time when the Old will resume, the Temple rebuilt and the reinstitution of the OT sacrificial system (that’s typical of Dispensationalists, but not necessarily universal). Thus, they typically speak of God’s OT people and God’s NT people. Both Dispensationalists and Covenantalists see a change from Old to New; however, we disagree about the nature of that change. Lastly, we should remember that there is a great deal of variety within both views, which can allow for greater or lesser degrees of common ground dependent upon the particulars in each position.


III. Jesus is the God of the Covenant, establishing the Covenant relationship (16-20)
A. Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, then James and John, and tells them to leave their kinsman and way of life. He sets them apart for a purpose, promising them that they will mediate blessings to others, and he begins the process of reshaping them to fulfill that purpose (cf. Gen 12ff.)

B. Like Abraham, those who are called go.


IV. Jesus is the God of Power: Power over both the supernatural and the natural (21-39)
A. Jesus teaches with palpable authority.

B. Jesus exercises supreme power over demonic forces (the supernatural)

C. Jesus exercises supreme power over the physical body (the natural)

D. Some (Peter’s mother-in-law, in this case) will receive from Jesus and serve him, that is, enter into a properly ordered love relationship with him.


V. Jesus’ power restores us to God (40-45)
A. Leprosy barred a person from both the Temple (where one communed with God) and the nation (where one communed with his people -- see Levitical law, esp. Lev 13). Though it may not apply for this particular leper, the event itself indicates Jesus’ mission - to cleanse people from the blight of sin (the outward disease symbolizes the inward condition) so that they may be able to commune with God and his people.

B. Some will receive from Jesus and remain separate from him (contrast to IV.D., above). The cleansed leper disobeyed Jesus, and Mark gives no indication that he actually went to the Temple to be restored to worship.



Essentially, in chapter 1 Mark establishes Jesus’ link to former revelation; he presents Jesus as the God of Power, the Ruler or King over creation; he indicates that the King is on a rescue mission; and he defines the mission, to restore people to a right relationship to God. At our last meeting I said that Mark 1 gives the whole movement of Mark’s Gospel. I might go so far as to say that, if you’ve read Mark 1 then you have read Mark’s Gospel. Obviously the remainder of the text gives important details, but in chapter 1 Mark hits all his major themes.

Born Standing Up

A recent road trip afforded me the opportunity to listen to the audio-book version of Steve Martin’s memoir reflecting on his career in stand-up comedy. Nurtured by his mathematical mind and his college forays into philosophy, Martin’s innovations in stand-up are a case study in the shift from the Modern to the Postmodern.

In his analysis of the craft, Martin detected a formulaic relationship between the comic and the audience. The art of stand-up was found in the comic’s ability to build a sense of tension and then release it with the punch line. An audience almost instinctively fell into this rhythm of build-and-release, and successful comics were those who instinctively tapped into it – that mysterious stage quality known as “comedic timing.”

By studying the stage habits of successful performers, Martin further noted that each had a signature gesture, almost imperceptibly subtle, that accompanied the delivery of the punch line. On one occasion in particular, he watched a well-known, aged comic on the Tonight Show who patted his belly with each punch line. In his old-age, the comedian slurred his speech such that punch line was often unintelligible. Nonetheless, the audience always laughed on cue. Martin concluded that in the current state of stand-up, audiences had essentially been trained to recognize a punch line and respond appropriately, an almost Pavlovian arrangement.

Here’s the Postmodern shift. Martin wanted to create a comedic style that disrupted the automatic build-and-release rhythm, allowing the audience to choose when to laugh – a more democratic, participatory stand-up. The release (punch line) was the key. The release simultaneously served two functions: it cued the audience as to when they ought to laugh, but it also restricted them to laughing at times dtermined by the comic. Martin wanted to take a top down paradigm and make it bottom up – grassroots comedy.

So he asked the question, “What if there’s no release, no punch line?” Martin’s comedy developed around the idea that he would perpetually build up a joke or gag and never complete it. He would offer no resolution. While the audience waited for the release, he moved to the next build up of tension. If the audience got the gag, they laughed right then. But if some people didn’t get it until later (even the next day, perhaps) they were free to laugh then, too. The product was a more spontaneous, natural experience for the audience.

It’s interesting to see that Steve Martin’s frenetic, unstructured, “wild-and-crazy-guy” routines of the 70’s were actually highly structured and precisely choreographed, the product of near scientific analysis and application of philosophical theory. Despite the overly silly antics, a certain amount of genius was a work.

Then again, given the smart wit and technical virtuosity of Martin’s later work, it’s not that surprising.

Unfortunately, for all his technical virtuosity, both Martin’s narrative and the life he narrates are emotionally arid. His descent into non-sequitur absurdism and unrestrained sarcasm seems to leave him without the capacity for sincerity or depth of heart. And in that, Martin exemplifies Postmodernism’s organic connection to Modernism’s dehumanizing bent toward fragmentary compartmentalism.