CONFESSIONS OF A CHRISTIAN ATHEIST: when faith abandons alignment:

This message is for those who’ve outgrown the spiritual gymnastics of aligning with anyone simply because they invoke the name of Jesus. We may utter the same name—but we do not recognize the same Divinity.

This past month, the world has once again been barraged by declarations of a Christianity loud in volume yet hollow in heart, booming in rhetoric but bankrupt in love.  We’ve seen headlines like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller proclaiming, “God saved our President so that he could save our country,” and US Evangelical leaders hailing Netanyahu as “the leader of the evangelical movement of the world.” 

But that is not the God I’ve come to know in over five decades of ministry. That is not my Jesus.

So I write this essay not as a theologian, not as a preacher—but as someone whose faith has been desecrated by self-proclaimed prophets.

This is my confession. I’m a Christian Atheist when faith gets hijacked to endorse injustice, rudeness, and hatred.

Don’t misunderstand me:

I believe in God.
I believe in the God who is defined by grace and revealed through Christ – for all the world to see.
I believe in the God of exuberant, unconditional love – for enemy, for sinner, for stranger.
I believe in the God who came to seek and save, not detect and destroy.
I believe in the God of all, not a select club of self-righteous worshippers
I believe in the incarnated God who became the hope of nations – all nations

BUT

I do not believe in the god created in the image of man’s own biases.
I do not believe in a god who blesses one nation at the expense of another.
I do not believe in a god who saves one man’s life at the cost of another’s
I do not believe in the god who is obsessed with a piece of real estate while souls are perishing across the border
I do not believe in a god who appoints leaders as political tokens at the expense of holiness and character.
I do not believe in a god who feeds the wealthy with promises of prosperity and success while children in Gaza starve beneath the rubble.
I do not believe in a god who mirrors our prejudices and excuses our violence.

If that’s your god, then let me be clear—
I worship a different Jesus.

I worship the one whose hands held healing, but also interruption, stirring tables as easily as touching wounds.
I worship the one with a voice that comforts the broken and unsettles the comfortable.
I worship the one who wore compassion like a cloak, stitched with the threads of every outsider’s story.
I worship the one whose gaze did not glance—it lingered, until shame unravelled and dignity was restored.
I worship the one who dared to dine with the “wrong ones,” daring others to redefine who is “right.”
I worship the one who was an interruption and incarnation—
the Word made flesh,
the Truth made tangible,
the Light that didn’t blind, but revealed.

He did not conquer Rome—He conquered despair.
He did not build a throne—He bent down and wrote in dirt.
He did not come for Israel, He came for humanity
His power was presence,
His kingdom—kinship.
And His crown?
Thorns, worn for the love of those
who couldn’t yet love themselves.

If this is your Jesus, we are on the same page

But I’m no longer willing to debate whether burying children under rubble constitutes “the right to self-defence” in the name of your god.
I’m no longer entertaining excuses for hatred, ethnic cleansing, or brutality dressed up as Christianity.
I’m no longer willing to discuss the legitimacy of sending people to concentration camps because they outstayed their welcome.
I no longer believe in your god.
I am done tolerating indifference that masquerades as theology.
I am done accepting indecency and rudeness as unfortunate byproducts of political duty
I am done absorbing moral cowardice hiding behind spiritual exclusiveness and self-righteousness.

I will no longer agree that we serve the same god.

When you justify war.
When you choose your side
When you rationalize disrespect.
When you intellectualize rudeness.

I choose to walk away.
I choose to emulate the one who embraced the outcasts
Who forgave His crucifiers
Who touched the untouchables
Who dignified the despicable

And told us to do the same

I am not here to be your sparring partner.
I’m finished.

Watching a people erased is not a “difference of opinion.”
It’s a moral failure.

I do not believe in a creator who came to seek and destroy

If that’s your god, count me out.

I am a Christian, but an unbeliever of what you proclaim to be divine
I am a Christian by confession, an atheist by resistance
I am a Christian atheist