Extracted from his email and post here.
Leaving Christianity brought an unexpected freedom in my relationship with Jesus. I no longer had to defend every claim made about him, harmonize every account, or treat every question as a threat to my salvation. I was free to encounter what remained compelling without promising allegiance to the institution that had mediated the encounter.
The Jesus available to us comes through ancient texts, communities of interpretation, and centuries of argument. There is no intellectually honest way to extract him entirely from those histories. Neither is there a reason to pretend that an institution’s account exhausts what someone might recognize in his life.
What continues to hold my attention is his refusal to accept the religious management of human worth. In the Gospel narratives, people whose lives had been reduced to a condition or category become people worth addressing. Hunger interrupts religious argument. Suffering places a demand on those who would prefer to discuss whether the sufferer deserves help.
There is also his disturbing proximity to people whose presence threatened respectable boundaries. Compassion was consequential because it altered who belonged at the table and exposed the authority behind their exclusion. That remains a demanding social practice long after someone stops believing in his divinity.
I do not need Jesus to be flawless, supernatural, or the exclusive source of these insights for them to deserve attention. Nor do I need to turn him into a modern thinker who conveniently agrees with everything I believe. A serious relationship with an inherited figure includes disagreement, historical distance, and the freedom to leave some teachings behind.
A post-Christian relationship with Jesus becomes possible when appreciation no longer requires submission. He enters a wider human conversation about how to live, where his words and example are examined alongside other sources of wisdom and the evidence of lived experience. Nobody has to surrender their judgment to remain in that conversation.
