Can an Atheist Love Jesus?

I have heard the same question repeated over the last few days. It is this: Why would atheists even talk or care about religion when they don’t believe in it?

Let me give it a try.

First, I care about religion because it has a far and powerful reach into our political, social and policy debates in this country.

Second, I care because to apply or insert religion as the foundation for discerning right and wrong is dangerous and irresponsible and it happens every day.

Third, I care because I love Jesus.

Yup, you read it correctly. I love Jesus. Let me begin at number three and work my way back.

I was born into the Lutheran church and lived my life being shaped and formed by its teachings, doctrines and systems of belief. It told me who I was while telling me who you are.

 I learned to believe that all people were born with the inescapable burden of sin; a blemish that would follow us through our lives for which we must constantly work to assuage and keep in line. It didn’t take long to move the gaze from my own sin to your sin. From church I learned who was bad and who was good, who God liked and who he didn’t.

I became an ordained pastor in the same church, teaching the same doctrines that I had learned as a child. I witnessed others being shaped by it and heard the words from my parishioners who knew about the less-worthy; the non-Christian, the promiscuous, the girl with the dragon tattoo!

As a woman I experienced the patriarchy of the Christian church and began to question much of what I had spent my life learning. I eventually acquired so much knowledge I could no longer subscribe to the finite beliefs of Christianity.

It was Jesus who gave me this nudge and led me out of the church and into a new way of thinking and visioning the world around me.

Yup, Jesus.

I studied the gospels intently; read them in Greek and visited the places where these stories supposedly took place while I studied in Israel and Palestine. I read scholars from outside the church and discovered more about Jesus than I had growing up.

I love Jesus and the story of this ancient Semite because he profoundly and courageously acts for those who have been left out, put out or pushed down by the power of the day. Jesus addressed those within his community who had been relegated by the religious law to the status of worthless, dirty and impure.

From stories about women caught in the snares of the Levitirite of Marriage to those pushed out because of impurity from their menses, this Jesus was outrageous in his risk to talk to, teach and touch women. He did the same for those impoverished, with a withered hand, bent over back or leprous deterioration.

Jesus is about creating a society of balance, of justice, where everyone is given opportunity “to be”: to be safe, to be heard and to be validated.

I love Jesus and the story of this ancient dude. He is worth reading about and understanding, even more so without the whole divinity-thing.  Jesus is more powerful without being thought of as God.

I know that I could never pick up a stick, say some incantations and do what Harry Potter does. That’s magic, silly. We’re not magic. That’s just fantasy, not reality.

Same is true for Jesus. When Christians and any others who read his story focus on the supernatural powers he is purported to have, we place him in the same arena as Harry. Not meant for me, silly. Jesus is God, fantasy, not reality.

Christianity gets this wrong. The story of Jesus is intended as a model for living now. He is a person who exemplifies the individual power you and I have when we consistently work to build a society that is in balance for all.

This is a far more challenging Jesus than the magic-out-of-reach Jesus.

Without the moniker of divinity Jesus has even more potential to be a powerful force for change in our contemporary society, and that’ why I want you, me and everyone else to know about him,

Jesus is still important.

We also need to know more about Christianity, the Church and Biblebecause we cannot combat ignorance with ignorance. It will be our own reasoned interpretation of scripture that will curb and reduce religious claims, not ignoring or demeaning them.

The more we all know about God and Jesus, the closer we will get to a true separation of church and state. Only then will religion be allowed to flourish within its own compound of belief, choosing how to be present in the world without pushing to direct it.

Yes, I am an atheist who loves Jesus. Perhaps we could all benefit from such seeming contradictions.