Goodbye Jesus
A review of the Tim Sledge memoir
I discovered Tim Sledge on Twitter @Goodbye_Jesus. Tim’s tweets appeared since one of my passions is studying the life of Jesus, his associates, and questions of faith. Tim has written multiple books; you can find them on Amazon under his name. He’s a former Southern Baptist Minister and holds numerous degrees.
The book I’m writing about in this post is called Goodbye Jesus, written in memoir style. It tells of Tim’s life before, during, and after his ministry. Spoiler alert: Tim, once an outstanding, dedicated, successful minister, left Christianity entirely and is now a Humanist, a non-theistic philosophy that relies on reason and empathy versus the supernatural. The author did an outstanding job of chronically his journey, providing primary source material such as crucial correspondence between himself and his flock.
What I like most about the book is Tim’s ability to analyze his critical life reactions, decisions, and conclusions. Ironically, I think his ministry training contributed to his ability to do that. However, I believe Tim’s personality is also conducive to the approach.
Sadly, a group of Judas’s sabotaged his ministry. Once again, I see the irony in what happened. The Jesus figure is Tim, who peacefully goes about the country preaching the good news and helping the downtrodden. Yet, the Church is threatened by Tim’s ability and power, just as Jesus threatened the Jewish priests in antiquity.
Thankfully, Tim didn’t live under Roman oppression as well. Instead, in our free USA, also ironically (again) a Christian-based country, he rebounded after his deconversion and continues to be a successful businessman and author.
In the book’s first half, I thought Tim’s issue within his Church could be considered sour grapes. The powers that be pushed him out, just as a leader in any occupation, could be pushed out for any number of reasons. I spent forty years working for two Fortune 500 corporations and saw managerial carnage. My companies took over others, merged, bought, and sold employees as commodities.
I watched loyal employees pack their items into cardboard boxes and then be escorted by security personnel to the building’s front door as if the employee had become a pariah overnight. My company outsourced my entire division to another company at one point. If not for a lucky break, I would’ve been out of a job without empathy or negotiation.
Finally, layoffs occurred at the end of my career, and I received a small severance package to retire gracefully. I was ready to retire, but I saw many who weren’t throughout my life, and the loss of work hit many people very hard.
But cost-cutting, business consolidation, and strategy led to layoffs and organizational changes within my business world. How could Tim’s Church conspire against him with such coldness? Tim’s home Southern Baptist Church follows the philosophy of Jesus Christ, who preached redemption. Tim executed a stellar performance. People wrote to him, thanking him for saving them. If the Church wanted to make a change, why not reorganize, reshuffle, commiserate, and discuss, like a Christian would and should instead of forcing him to vacate the Church and not return? How could a Christian annihilate another Christian to the point of breaking that person without a chance at redemption?
You must read the book to find detailed answers, follow Tim Sledge, or access his websites to get his take on what occurred, but I will say the early Church, per the Gospels themselves, had its share of disputes and issues, and they could be quite deadly. For example, in the New Testament Book of Acts, the Gospel recorded an incident after Jesus’s death as the apostles built the new Church. Two believers lie about how much money they pledged to the Church, and the apostle Peter scolds both. Following the verbal punishment, the husband and wife drop to the floor dead, and the disciples carry the dead bodies out the door.
Thankfully, Tim and his wife, a fellow minister, didn’t drop dead to the floor during their verbal takedown, but their home church punished them by killing their spirit.
Jesus’s brother James led a Jewish version of early Christianity. Unfortunately, James didn’t follow his brother when his brother lived. The apostle Paul, a Roman citizen and Jew who persecuted early Christians became a follower of the resurrected Jesus and led the expansion of the early Christian Church. Paul needed to sort out rules and regulations, and he and Peter went back and forth on the law of circumcision. Fortunately for the gentile men of the day, they didn’t need emergency surgery on their private parts.
I’m touching on relatively benign differences because the dung hit the fan later in history as people from varying faiths annihilated each other, but back to Tim and his unforgiving Church. He admitted some faults, eventually moved on, and found additional opportunities to minister.
Eventually, though, his life falls apart again due to other catastrophic decisions by his Christian peers. The gripping second half of the book details the gauntlet of life Tim navigates, and eventually, he loses his faith altogether.
Finally, at the end of the book, he puts together his rational decision to become a Humanist versus a Christian. Sledge uses Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar, to lead his rationale. I’m familiar with Doctor Ehrman. I’ve read three of his books and am a paid member of his blog, so on occasion have direct contact with him. Like Tim, Bart started a Christian, made discoveries, and left the faith. Ehrman’s issue with Christianity, as is mine, is a question no one can answer: why is there human suffering?
I’ve said to fellow Christians Bart Ehrman’s books will make your faith-fulled head spin, and it has mine. However, my thirst for knowledge started decades ago when I discovered John Dominic Crossan, a former Catholic priest turned New Testament scholar who participated in the Jesus Seminar and wrote The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991), among other books. The Jesus Seminar consisted of biblical scholars who gathered to identify what part of the New Testament Gospels they found authentic.
Crossan sent my faith reeling, but I persisted in believing. The following profound punch to my Christian gut came via Sapiens: Yuval Noah Harari’s brief history of humankind. His chapter on the cognitive revolution and belief systems made me scratch my chin and roll my eyes. Mr. Sledge summarizes belief systems in Goodbye Jesus as well. Indoctrination into a belief system typically occurs based on a person’s country, culture, and upbringing.
Finally, I read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by scholar Reza Aslan. In Aslan’s book, as does Crossan, Ehrman, and Sledge in their books, Jesus is portrayed as an apocalyptical figure of his time, along with others like him. The difference maker is that Christians believe he rose from the dead, conquered death, and erased our sins.
Christians believe in the Jesus of miracles and of resurrection. Catholics believe they consume the actual body and blood of Christ at Sunday services. However, only 2.6 billion people out of 8 billion humans are Christians. What about Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists? For me, as well as the current version of Tim Sledge, the tribal nature of religion is a big problem. One pastor told me to let God handle the situation. That answer contradicts my all-inclusive Christian philosophy and makes my head hurt.
I credit Mr. Sledge for summarizing his alternate worldview from multiple sources. The author’s view change came via intense soul-searching over a long period. In addition to his deep dive, he ironically develops parables or stories to explain how the idea of God or gods developed. I found his approach to presenting his new philosophy on life ironic since it is with stories the founders of all religions relayed their rules, regulations, and philosophies. I’m not saying storytelling is ineffective; it certainly is, and that is Tim’s point. People’s faiths are based on stories, except Tim no longer believes faith stories are true.
But the most profound irony is that Tim landed back where he started, except without the religious dogma. As before, he is now a deeply caring individual who practices one of Jesus’s two most important commandments: Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
As far as I’m concerned, whatever force God is, blessed Tim Sledge by granting him the ability to turn all religions on their ear and arrive at a state of mind and practice that would genuinely make the world a better place and should make God happy. He outlines his new set of personal commandments, and I commend him.
Pope Francis recently responded to a critical church issue with the line, “Who am I to judge?” I say this to Tim, any believer or non-believer. Who am I to judge? In addition, I hold to the famous quote attributed to Socrates “I know that I know nothing.”
Thank you, Tim Sledge, for the courage to express your harrowing but ultimately humanistic story.
