Russell Brand, a comedian, and Hollywood actor, discussed his Christian faith in a video message he sent to his 4.4 million Instagram followers this week, saying, “I do not belong to myself anymore, and that is genuine freedom.”
In his video, Brand said, “There have been moments when I’ve told you that I felt distant from Christ.” This verse helped me reestablish my relationship with our Lord. It comes from Isaiah. “Do not be afraid; I have saved you.” You are the one I called by name. You belong to me.
“I’ve got the notion that through dread I may take back my own will, that I would—through fear—think I have to be in charge of the situation,” Brand continued. “My sentiments of faith have evolved lately,” Brand said.
“If you feel assaulted or under threat, it’s clear, reasonable, and smart to regain control,” the Forgetting Sarah Marshall actress continued. “But since we are dealing with the King of eternity, the sense of trust is permitting Christ, in His sub-molecular power, right down to the granule, right out into the cosmic, to order all things.”
“This is something I have never understood before I became a Christian,” Brand continued. Once you accept sin, surrender, and allow Him to carry you, you enter a transcendent realm that grants you grace and grants you new freedom. You are departing from the confines of the materialistic and rationalistic world.
The actor said, “It is genuine liberation that I no longer belong to myself.”
In April, Breitbart News revealed that Brand became a Christian and underwent baptism. He stated that the baptism was interpreted for him as “a chance to pass away and be raised from the dead, a chance to be reborn in the name of Christ so that you can live as an awakened and enlightened person, as it says in Galatians.”
“It’s evident to me, even if I understand that many people are a little pessimistic about the growing popularity of Christianity and the return to God,” he remarked at the time. As our institutions and systems of values collapse and the meaning in the contemporary world wanes, we all become more conscious of the eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we have all known our entire lives inside of us and all around us. And it’s really thrilling for me.
Brand announced to his followers in December that he was reading the Bible and C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book “The Problem of Pain,” which examines the purpose of pain in human existence.
The actor stated earlier this year that he was reading Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life” and hoped to have a “personal connection with God.”
