I'm a persnickety old reformer, but I'll celebrate this:
The actor first engaged with the church while living with a monastery of Franciscan Capuchin friars in order to better understand the late mystic St. Padre Pio, whom LaBeouf portrays in the upcoming movie.
Heading into the project, LaBeouf said that he was at the darkest point in his life after a series of public scandals. He was drawn to spirituality and joined a variety of faith groups to find meaning, fighting thoughts of helplessness and suicide.
"I had a gun on the table. I was outta here," Shia recalled in the nearly 90-minute interview. "I didn't want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don't know where to go. You can't go outside and get like, a taco."
"But I was also in this deep desire to hold on," he added.
You have to wonder how many Hollywood celebs feel this way.
Fame and fortune don't fix the problems in your life. They often magnify them. Money can't heal the problems of the heart.
LaBeouf says he went to the monastery to study for role studying Padre Pio, who died in 1968, in an effort to save his career. But he found much more than that.
He continued, "I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn't think, 'Oh, I'm gonna save my career.'"
While researching and performing the role, however, LaBeouf said he felt "tricked" by God.
"And when I got here, a switch happened. It was like Three-Card Monte. It was like someone tricked me into it, it felt like," the actor recounted. "Not in a bad way. In a way that I couldn't see it. I was so close to it that I couldn't see it. I see it differently now that time has passed."
LaBeouf described talking through his feelings and learning about the Christian understanding of sin and forgiveness as key to pulling him out of a dark time in his life.
Is this the same guy who used to be on the Disney Channel?
By the way, he says Mel Gibson helped lead him to faith!
Last year, LaBeouf was charged with two misdemeanors — petty theft and battery — after he stole a man's hat in a fight that turned physical. Just a couple of months later, his ex-girlfriend and pop star FKA Twigs sued him over his alleged abusive behavior.
Another ex-girlfriend was listed in the lawsuit and also claimed LaBeouf was abusive toward her.
"It was seeing other people who have sinned beyond anything I could ever conceptualize also being found in Christ that made me feel like, 'Oh, that gives me hope,'" LaBeouf told the bishop. "I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission."
You might look at Christians and think they're all about being moral busybodies, and there are people the world over who use religion for that.
But Romans 3:12 says we "all have turned away" and "there is no one who does good, not even one."
The Bible teaches that we are messed up, but that God has made a way to save us where there was no way.
It isn't that God merely throws us a life-preserver to keep us from sinking. We are dead, and it is God who breathes life into us again.
The gift of grace that's offered to us is free, because Jesus paid for all the horrible things we've done.
All you have to do is accept that grace.
One last quote from LaBeouf:
This has given me structure to be able to enjoy my freedom.
There's a lot of wisdom in that one sentence, friends.
Here's LaBeouf's full interview with Bishop Robert Barron, the most popular Catholic cleric in America, about his conversion:
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