Brad Pitt is widely regarded as one of the best film actors of his generation. When he speaks, people listen.
In a 2015 Daily Telegraph interview he was candid about his lack of faith. He grew up as a Southern Baptist in Missouri, where his his father ran a trucking company, "with all the Christian guilt about what you can and cannot, should and shouldn't do". He now describes himself as an atheist.
So what turned Pitt against religion, and how far does he speak for others who've left their childhood faith behind?
It doesn't sound as though his childhood was religiously abusive. He pays tribute to his upbring in the interview, describing his father as "very, very tough" but capable of being a "softie" and "really big on integrity".
Nevertheless: for Pitt, religion just didn't "take".
He's spoken of this before, telling Parade magazine in 2007: "I'd go to Christian revivals and be moved by the Holy Spirit, and I'd go to rock concerts and feel the same fervour. Then I'd be told, 'That's the Devil's music! Don't partake in that!' I wanted to experience things religion said not to experience."
At the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 he said: "Many people find religion to be very inspiring. Myself, I found it very stifling. I grew up with Christianity and I remember questioning it greatly. Some things didn't work for me. Some things did...I grew up being told God is going to take care of everything and it doesn't always work out that way. And then you're told 'Well, it's God's will.' I got my issues. Man, you don't want to get me started."
Sadly, Pitt's experience of the Christian faith – or at least the way he understands that experience now – is that it was limiting, not true to life, unconvincing and, in his own word, "stifling".
So how should Christians respond to charges like that?
1. Admit the truth in them. Yes, Christians can sometimes be life-denying. We come across as frightened of the big, wide, wonderful world outside the church walls instead of rejoicing in it. Yes, there are lot of bad things out there and some of them might tempt us to fall away from our Christian profession. But the answer isn't to retreat behind higher walls, it's to trust in a greater God. We don't want to convince people to buy into a particular lifestyle with its pre-packaged politics, prejudices and opinions; we want to show them Christ. It's tragic when people seek to convert non-believers to a life that's less rich and less satisfying than the one they have already – and pointless.
2. Question the assumption behind them. Yes, Pitt's upbringing may have been unnecessarily rigorous and may have left him feeling trapped. But part of a parent's job is to put fences round what's permitted for their children and what isn't. A wise parent will tailor those limitations to the child and work with the grain of their character. We don't know anything about what Pitt's parents did, but letting young people do exactly what they want isn't in their best interests.
3. Don't apologise too much. Isaac Watts wrote a hymn in 1707 which begins, "Come, we that love the Lord/ And let our joys be known." It has the great lines, "Religion never was designed/ To make our pleasures less." That's right, but we have to say that our pleasures might be different. Human instincts aren't all good and righteous. We want things that aren't good for ourselves or for other people, and we need the discipline of self-denial to deny ourselves some of the pleasures we crave. For people who don't share our faith this can come across as life-limiting – stifling, in Pitt's word – but for Christians, giving up a temporary pleasure as part of our service to God is just what we do. It may be hard, but it's also a duty and a joy.
Jesus once told a rich young man – a good person, like Brad Pitt – that if he wanted to be perfect he had to sell everything he had and follow him. He went away sorrowful. In the end, following Christ costs everything. There's no way of softening that and we shouldn't try. But we will be judged very harshly if we place barriers in people's way that we've created ourselves because we are too censorious or too afraid to let people seek God in their own time and in their own way.
