In the middle of all the hype and angst about Anne "Interview With a Vampire" Rice leaving Christianity, a new story has emerged, albeit with a little less fanfare. It seems as though Katy "I Kissed a Girl" Perry has decided to tell the world, "I'm still a Christian." Or at least that part of the world that read her recent interview, "Sex, God and Katy Perry," in Rolling Stone magazine.

Talk about a spiritual cage match made in, er, heaven. Wouldn't you just love to get the 68 year-old Rice--raised Catholic, turned atheist, Catholic again, and now somewhere in between--in a room with 25 year-old Perry--raised Pentecostal by tongue-speaking parents, not rejecting her faith, but not exactly serving as a wholesome role model for all of her music fans? Wonder what these two spiritual titans would say to each other? 

That's probably not going to happen, but we can dream, can't we? In fact, we can do better than that. We can pull some actual quotes from an interview Anne Rice did with the Los Angeles Times and a short piece Mark Moring wrote on Katy Perry for CTentertainment.

Anne:  I've been living with this now for 12 years, and I've come to the conclusion from my experience with organized religion that I have to, in the name of Christ, step away from this. It's a matter of rejecting what I've discovered about the persecution of gays, the persecution and oppression of women and the actions of churches on many different levels.  

Katy:  I look up into the sky and I'm just mindf---ed -- all those stars and planets, the neverendingness of the universe. I just can't believe that we're the only polluting population. Every time I look up, I know that I'm nothing and there's something way beyond me. I don't think it's as simple as heaven and hell.

Anne:  I respect completely people who want to find a church that's more in accord with what they can        morally accept. But for me, walking away is the thing right now. In the name of Christ, in the name of God.  

Katy:  God is very much still a part of my life. But the way the details are told in the Bible--that's very fuzzy for me. I still believe that Jesus is the son of God. But I also believe in extraterrestrials, and that there are people sent from God to be messengers, and all sorts of crazy stuff."

I don't know about you, but a phrase comes to mind when I read these quotes: It's all about me. As much as Anne Rice is trying to justify her exit from Christianity, and as much as Katy Perry is trying to convince people that she's still a Christian, they are both essentially in the same spiritual place: they want God on their own terms.

Rice and Perry may be separated by a couple of generations and come from vastly different church traditions, but they are both vivid examples of the current "spiritual but not religious" trend that is getting so much play. Even if one is leaving the faith while the other one is staying, it seems that both of these quasi-spiritual celebrities have privatized God so he doesn't get in their way. 

So what are we supposed to do with this? Can we learn anything? Well, I can think of one big lesson. Rather than focusing people caught up in a false spirituality, let's look for some new examples of what Christianity looks like when it's done right. While there are lots of people who distort true religion in the name of God, there are many more people who embody what it means to be truly spiritual, usually with little or no fanfare.

Take Dr. Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York, who has provided eye care in Afghanistan for 30 years with International Assistance Mission, a Christian medical aid group that has worked in Afghanistan for more than four decades. Dr. Little and his team, including British physican Dr. Karen Woo from the relief organization, Bridge Afghanistan, were on an medical aid mission in a remote part of the country that required them to hike three weeks across a mountainous terrain on foot with pack horses.

Dr. Woo wrote in a blog post last month: "The expedition will require a lot of physical and mental resolve and will not be without risk but ultimately, I believe that the provision of medical treatment is of fundamental importance and that the effort is worth it in order to assist those that need it most."

Just this past week, it was reported that Dr. Little and Dr. Woo were among two of 10 people killed in Afghanistan by Taliban insurgents. A brief report in a local newspaper near Dr. Little's hometown had this to say: "In his 30 years in Afghanistan, Dr. Little cared for and operated on thousands of Afghan men, women and children. It's quite possible he cured the eyesight of the Taliban man who shot him to death."

A photo from the Bethlehem, New York Times Union shows Libby and Tom Little in 2001 before they spoke at a church. The Littles were members of First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, New York.

This is what Christianity--or "religion that is pure and undefiled before God"--looks like: "to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27). Tom Little and his team practiced a faith on God's terms, not their own. They weren't self-centered and they weren't celebrities--to the contrary, until now no one outside their hometowns and relief organizations knew they existed--but they were giants of the faith, "of whom the world was not worthy--wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth" (Hebrews 11:38).

Anne and Katy, you're free to pursue your personalized, customized, self-centered relationship with God, but we aren't going to pay any more attention to you. Nor are we going to wonder what you're going to do next. In Tom Little and Karen Woo we have two incredible examples of what true Christianity looks like. It's Christ-centered, it's public, and yes, it's dangerous. But it's worth it because it's what God calls each of us to do.