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Award-winning Writer Can't Get Over His "Jesus Phase"

John Jeremiah Sullivan, an award-winning writer who has been compared to the famous contemporary writers Tom Wolfe and David Foster Wallace, had what he called an adolescent "bout with evangelicalism." Sullivan has walked away from the church and a biblical faith, but he can't fully reject the person of Jesus Christ. He writes:

At least once a year since college, I'll be getting to know someone, and it comes out that we have in common a high school "Jesus phase." That always gives us an excellent laugh. Except a phase is supposed to end—or at least give way to other phases—not simply expand into a long preoccupation …. My problem isn't that I dream I'm in hell …. It isn't that I feel psychologically harmed. It isn't that I feel a sucker for having bought it all. It's that I love Jesus Christ …. Why should He vex me? Why is His ghost not friendlier? Why can't I just be a good Enlightenment child and see in His life a sustaining example of what we can be, as a species?

Sullivan claims that "once you've known [Jesus] as God," it's hard to find comfort in Jesus as just another man. And even after years of unbelief, Sullivan admits "one has doubts about one's doubts."

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