Atheist Jesus Follower Writes Book on What Non-Believers Can Learn From Christ
An author who describes himself as a "secular Jesus follower" has released a new book about what Christ can offer people who don't believe, arguing that Jesus' wisdom and teachings stand out from other well known spiritual leaders.
Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower: Finding Answers in Jesus for Those Who Don't Believe, as the book is titled, was released earlier this week, and seeks to show secular people how they can use Christ as a primary guide for one's life.
The author, Tom Krattenmaker, who is a USA Today contributing columnist and communications director at Yale Divinity School, argues that there is much from Jesus' life that secular people can use.
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In an excerpt from the book published on his website, Krattenmaker states that Jesus "is a figure of unusual wisdom and deeply moving strangeness who calls me to reconceive the orientation of my own life and the manner in which I engage my fellow humans."
"His story compels me to access my often-reluctant generosity and pull myself out of my self-centered worries and obsessions. This figure's inspiration has changed the way I treat the supposed nobodies whom I could easily get away with mistreating," the excerpt continues.
"His message and manner, I find, address our culture's maladies and malaises amazingly well, as they do my own."
The author adds that there have been other great religious and political leaders in the world, including Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and others, but insisted that Jesus "stands out" among them.
In another Q&A, Krattenmaker admits that his admiration for Jesus might "seem odd at first glance," since he is a secular person, but argued that the practice of following Jesus even as a non-believer is "not only eminently do-able, but enriching — enriching for our individuals lives and the communities we are part of."
He added that Jesus' work is "the most profound and inspiring" that he has encountered.
USA Today published a column adapted from Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower earlier this week, taking a look at social issues affecting America, such as the need for prison reform.
In the column, Krattenmaker argues that the U.S. might be a Christian nation in some ways, but it fails to be a Jesus nation when it comes to the treatment of transgressors.
"The Jesus vision for crime and corrections is light-years apart from the vision we implement today. Apart, and superior. Jesus can free us from the prison-industrial complex to which we are all captive, in some shape or form, and from which we all need release," he wrote, pointing to a number of problems he finds in the American prison system, such as the large number of people serving life sentences, and the huge burden on U.S. taxpayers when it comes to keeping so many people behind bars.
