The Wild Reed: “I Like and Respect This Guy”: An Atheist’s Take on Jesus

Sunday, October 05, 2025

“I Like and Respect This Guy”: An Atheist’s Take on Jesus

The following was written and first shared in 2021 by actor Wil Wheaton in response to the AI generated image of Jesus at right.

My sharing today of Wheaton’s words is part of my ongoing effort to counter the rise in the U.S. of the idolotrous political movement known as Christian nationalism.

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This is, apparently, what the actual Jesus of Nazareth looked like, according to an artist and an algorithm and actual, historical, data (as opposed to a story that white people tell each other).

I am an atheist. I do not believe in god, or the devil, or heaven, or hell. But I like and respect this guy. He was a rebel, he was an anti-authoritarian, he dedicated his life to helping the poor, the sick, the indigent, the people who were discarded and rejected by society. He hung out with sex workers and lepers, and gave comfort to the sick and suffering, and he loudly and relentlessly called out the hypocrisy of the church and its leaders. As I understand it, he was like, “Hey, you’re a sinner. That’s a bummer. Let me help you be a better person. No, I don’t expect anything from you for that. I just want to be as loving as I can be.” He was a really cool guy.

This guy, in this picture, is not the Jesus I was introduced to in parochial school. The Jesus I was introduced to was soooooo white, like super super super white, and he was keeping an eye on you so he could snitch on you to his dad, who was SUPER PISSED AT EVERYTHING YOU DID all the time for some reason. The Jesus I knew was, like, maybe going to be okay with you, as long as you knew what a giant fuck-up you were. And he was absolutely not accepting of anyone who didn’t do exactly what the authority figures at school told us we had to do. And Reagan was essentially his avatar sent to Earth. If we didn’t worship Reagan the same way we were supposed to worship white Jesus, we were going to have a REALLY bad time. Did I mention that I was, like, 8 when all of this was drilled into me?

I deeply resent the way that American “Evangelical” Christianity turned this guy in this picture, who was reportedly a cool, loving, gentle, dude, who was a legit rebel, into someone who hates all the same things they hate, and who LOVES authoritarians the same way they do. I despise the people who do all sorts of cruel, hurtful, hateful things in this guy’s name. And they are EVERYWHERE in America.

I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world. What I do know is that, in America, this person has been perverted into a weapon, a cudgel, to be used against the same people the actual Jesus loved and stood up for. It’s disgusting.

And, look, if someone professes to follow the teachings of this dude, whose WHOLE FUCKING THING was “love everyone. Period. No exceptions,” and they don’t, like, do that? They are as bad as the money changers in the temple. I know that this dude loves them, because that’s his whole thing, but I suspect that, if this dude exists, he is disappointed and maybe a little embarrassed by them.

As an afterthought: I can’t stop thinking about how this dude was an immigrant, and poor. I keep thinking that, if he showed up in . . . let’s say Texas, today, how badly he would be treated by the very same people who use his name and pervert his teachings to exert control over the very same people Jesus spent his entire life looking after.

And, honestly, none of this would even matter if the American Christian extremists would keep their white Jesus out of our laws and government.

– Wil Wheaton

6 comments:

Percy said...: A fair rule of historical and spiritual thumb, as it were: From the record, Jesus pretty much deeply unnerved every single person he encountered in some way, perhaps even his own mother. If you're not unnerved by Jesus is some deeply uncomfortable way, you've likely made Jesus over in your own preferred image - a human proclivity (and *neither* a good nor wise one) across the spiritual spectrum since his very time: the Gospels are replete with accounts of his own closest disciples (not only male ones, but also female ones) falling into this trap, for which he basically tries to slap them back into his reality rather than their preferred reality.

Jesus of Nazareth did not come to be liked. He came to love, and be loved. And he showed that true love is a bloody, hard business. It's the least woo thing there is.; 9:05 AM
Percy said...: PS:
The first of the canonical Gospels as best we can tell, the Gospel of Mark, does NOT, pace New Testament 101 curricula of your, present a low Christology. As best we can tell from the literary and other evidence, Mark (*perhaps* writing as a younger collaborator of Peter) wrote a Gospel that the author of John's Gospel chose mostly to bookend. The Gospel of Mark presents a world of people suffering with the seething of death, disease, diabolical evil, and sin, into which Jesus of Nazareth hurls with great urgency like a meteor (thus a very high, rather than low, Christology; which is one reason it pairs so well with the Gospel of John, the writer of which apparently intended to complement the Gospel of Mark) - a people so bereft of the expectations of optimism (optimism is a creature of expectations, which are premeditated resentments, which in turn are not of God) that they have hearts/minds opened in Hope (which is quite different from optimism) to being surprised by this Jesus of Nazareth and by God, though they and his own disciples can't figure what to make of him.

Then again, I partake of the Flannery O’Connor view of the operations of grace, which is that they are not Nice because they interact with the human condition. In a secular vein, Tony Kushner captured this well in a non-sectarian way in Part II of Angels in America (I saw both parts in their original Broadway run) - the character actress Robin Weigert did wonderful work in the HBO teleplay with her role as the Diorama Mormon Pioneer Woman who comes to life to offer a lesson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAmIIaXgHhc

When you admit you feel like you’re mangled guts pretending, you finally have made some room for Hope (rather than optimism).

I can remember to this day the reaction of the audience in the Walter Kerr Theatre to this scene.; 9:14 AM
Michael J. Bayly said...: Great observations and insights, Percy. There's a couple of things you say that I plan on responding to but it's going to have to wait until some other time. But for now, I just wanted to at least acknowledge and thank you for your comments.

Peace,

Michael; 10:50 AM
Michael J. Bayly said...: Also, are you here in the Twin Cities?; 10:51 AM
Percy said...: No, the inner Boston metro where I've lived for over four decades after college years in Virginia; I came to the Boston metro (my parental extended families straddled CT and MA) when it was still a relatively tired and tatty place, before it became an glistening global Emerald City of rich ppl. Thanks for asking.; 5:18 PM
Michael J. Bayly said...: Dang. . . . I was hoping we could get together for a coffee sometime. :); 10:59 AM