MARCH 2026 SULLYGRAM:  I said I’d never get into the weeds on theology, but off-channel feedback for January’s Sullygram https://thomassullivanauthor.com/newsletters/01162026.html has me eyeball deep in dandelions. Two months on, I’m still corresponding with nearly a dozen readers over cosmic conjectures I made about creation and the meaning of life. Inevitably, feedback converged on religion, Christianity in particular. Glad to have such astute readers, but feel free to skip this Sullygram if frank opinions or spiritual speculations offend you. Exchanges with one particular friend in California crossed a lot of threads, so what follows here is adapted from emails we sent back and forth:

[California response] “Hi Sully. I have to say, the January Sullygram in my opinion was the best ever. Did you get many comments on it? Lots to unpack and sift through. There was one sentence I didn’t quite understand: ‘Whatever is ultimately true, I am pre-disposed to accept with full humility and contrition for my iniquities and failings.’ Would you mind expanding on that some?”

[what follows is adapted from emails I sent]

…I am not an evangelist (my truth is no better than anyone else’s), and I still fear taking away whatever beliefs work for others. But, for me, the sentence you highlight bridges Biblical testimonials I cannot subscribe to with more general truths that I readily accept.

Implicit therein are my doubts about demands made by my Christian roots that bothered me from the time I was a teenager. Historical accounts are egocentric to what each age knows, and the relatively unsophisticated Biblical testimonials of divine interactions left me cold. God as an entity that loses his temper, changes his mind, makes up for it by inventing the rainbow, fights through primitive weaponry, and looks like a man (don’t know why he would have a prostate, or a penis for that matter) is exactly what you’d expect from a narrow age trying to explain ultimate causes and purposes and drawing from previous traditions. The manipulations and contradictions did not comport with my view of a perfect Creator, prime mover, first cause, divine will etc. And yet, I saw a consistent statement of life’s manifest values. I guess you could say I found God in the Bible, but not necessarily the 66 books voted at the Council of Nicea in God. Sometimes arbitrary, plagued with contradictions, incompatible with full cultural awareness throughout history, it bore the excesses of human TMI. I did the dance with what to believe between OT and the Gospels but still was left with too much insertion of human demons and limited grasp. Intermediaries still raise red flags for me, whether witnesses, priests or visionaries. I steeped myself in historical/political accounts of schisms within Christianity from Martin Luther nailing 95 theses to a door at Wittenberg to a Pope (Innocent VIII) said to have bled young boys to death in an effort to save himself with transfusions. You could have called me doubting Thomas as I pretty much dismissed middle-men and details until I was left with just the one intermediary that cannot be dismissed. Jesus Christ is an intermediary, of course, central to the religion that bears his name.

Eventually I made intellectual peace with the semantics of a Holy Trinity, a triune God. Would a benevolent Creator expect me to sift through all of that zeal and theological debate to count the number of angels on the head of a pin? You will know truth because the holy spirit will put it in your heart, the world’s 5000 religions generally say when push comes to shove. Never a mention that truth might also be put in your head. That would be heresy, especially to human ecclesiastics who thought the world was flat! And what about the vast history (time and geography) before the mere 5K years Christianity recognizes? Reincarnation?

These were my years of rebellion and rejection, spent sifting through quaint testimonials and intermediaries. Nothing has been more manipulated and misused than holy zeal to justify horrors and subjugations across history’s disconnected chapters. Albeit foretold, Christ doesn’t even step into the picture until 2K years ago, and end times are always at hand. So many messiahs are prophesied across religions that accepting one becomes almost a gang sign, a conceit of concentrated human power. In Islam (Iranian Shiite version), the 12^th Mahdi is said to be here on Earth now, ready to usher in Armageddon in a final violent victory over infidels. If you had followed headlines in translation from the Teheran Times as I did over the years, you would grasp the significance of a relentless quest by Iranian mullahs for a nuclear trigger. And their barbaric purges of apostates today are as evil as Christianity’s sadistic Inquisition in Medieval times. But other versions of Islam are closer to modern Christianity in how they see end-times. Whoever takes control in Iran will offer no worse a nightmare than the nuclear abyss we just stepped away from. Recent events aside, my cynicism toward religious hypocrisy ran its course decades ago, and I began focusing on how a wizard divine of creation would communicate purpose and meaning across all ages and space. My personal conflict then shrank to whether Jesus Christ is the one and only bearer of a user manual for existence.

Cutting to the chase, a benevolent Creator’s universal message could have many manifestations, but they would all be simple and portable, and their core content would be the same. What matters is that we find the expression that finds us no matter when or where we are born. Details may vary, but if you accept one version of the same message, you show your willingness to accept them all. Jesus Christ is my manifestation. And the core message in common with all other manifestations, delivered through accounts of his teachings, sacrifice and resurrection? Short, simple, succinct: Love, Mercy, Forgiveness.

So, I exited the debate over details, embraced universality, and took Christ as my exemplar of the universal message. The details of Christ still fascinate me whether from mainstream dogma, apocrypha, or archaeology, but I no longer have to assess details or testimonials. Doubting Thomas vanished without dying. Christ (like Parsifal or the Holy Grail or dozens of other embodiments) is a path, an idea, a potential to be absolutely 100% accurately portrayed. At a minimum, Christ is the avatar of the Message. I accept that fully without having to debate, defend, or deny details. It isn’t a competition, or taking the knee to human consensus, or any of the convoluted sermons I’ve sat through which boiled down to how do I know the Bible is true, because it says so. In the only way that matters, the Bible is self-proving, because it contains all the truth I know – Love, Mercy, Forgiveness. But its extended details are not the litmus test of my soul. Nor is it copyrighted truth. Love, Mercy and Forgiveness appear across the spectrum of ages and places. I’m comfortable with that, and not in the least condescending toward anyone else’s sources of those same truths.

The inherent grace of knowing my failings is also universal. We all fall short of perfection. We are all hypocrites in some way, practicing double standards, conflicted by the shifting border between reflex needs and ever-changing societal standards. Therefore nature’s imperative to thrive isn’t innately wrong; but in order to reconcile with evolving cultural values it frequently necessitates some combination of those three cardinal ingredients of universal balm: Love, Mercy, Forgiveness.

[Further exchanges with my California friend led to substantive questions about Christ’s teaching and miracles – echoing issues other emailers were writing about. My reply references the death of someone we both knew, name redacted.]

…I find that universal message in all positive religions (and simply from living and observing nature). It’s why I can call myself a Christian. The proviso attached to that of accepting Christ (Lord, Savior) as the exclusive path (“…no one can come onto the Father except through me”) is where I broaden my outlook. Christ may be MY manifestation of sacrifice and redemption by dint of my time and place, but the details of his human incarnation do not – cannot – reach all souls in all places for all time unless expressed as meaning, purpose, path. It is the potential of that truth to travel forward and backward in time and place that I subscribe to.

Spare me the details and honest zeal of witnesses and testimonials [I wrote my California friend]. I believe in the meaning of Jesus Christ. No written exam required beyond what Christ stands for…Love, Mercy, Forgiveness. Force me to subscribe to details, and I’ll suspect I’m being called to account for the excesses and vanities of men – intermediaries. You’ll remember when [name redacted] was killed, his funeral was presided over by a minister I call “the Silver Fox.” Natty, smooth, and in the middle of the service he asked everyone to close their eyes and raise their hand if they accepted Christ. You can bet his eyes weren’t closed. He wanted to see how effective he was. God already knew. No intermediary needed. I took him (Silver Fox) to task for that. We stood by his limo in the rain, and he mumbled an acknowledgment and excuse as he handed me his card… Yes, I’ve exchanged mortal details for spiritual meaning and potential. Right or wrong about particulars doesn’t enter into it. Christ is my embodiment of a great equalizer that unifies all thinking beings from disconnected times and places and – who knows – perhaps other worlds in the cosmic vastness. Or do we believe “God was lonely” and an Earth week just happened to fit the working hours needed for Creation? Cosmic vastness is beyond knowable.

As for miracles, not surprising that in ages of less “scientific” explanation they were far more common. Not being dismissive here. Christ’s several dozen miracles defy much if not all conceivable Cartesian science. I’m simply pointing out the mind-set of those who wrote the accounts. Miracles were (and still are) pretty frequent as explanations, whether at Fatima, recorded on the Shroud of Turin, or seeing the crucifixion in a pattern of burnt toast or a face in rock formations on Mars. I’m always fascinated by the unexplained as well as demystifying miraculous things such as attempted by Immanuel Velikovsky in his trilogy (Ages in Chaos; Earth in Upheaval; Worlds in Collision) with the parting of the Red Sea, the rain of manna in the desert, and Moses turning his staff into a snake at Pharoah’s court. The thing is, Christ’s teachings – Love, Mercy, Forgiveness – don’t get any truer to me through divine demonstrations on demand.

Only as speculation then, I believe it is quite possible that Jesus of Nazareth is everything that 66-book collection voted on by color codes at one of the Councils of Nicea, even down to differences between the Gospels. He taught the universal Message writ large, and that’s how I recognize and accept him. A benevolent God would get that right. But men writing down details in letters back in that age of frequent miracles, maybe so, maybe not. I am full willing to believe whatever is the truth, and that’s what’s expected of me by God. I believe in that potential; I subjugate my reason to my faith; I embrace the fact that I need redemption through the grace of God no matter what the details are. For sure, I believe Christ awakened gradually to his mission on Earth. Not certain when it started. He reportedly says at age 12 (?) that he must be about his Father’s business when they find him in the Temple. John the Baptist recognizes him, albeit in somewhat murky terms. But then you have Jesus’ doubts themselves. Seeking solace and renewal in a 40-day desert retreat, questioning. Seeming perhaps a tad dismissive – “you always have the poor with you” as a rebuke when asked why perfumed ointments weren’t sold and the money given to the poor. And then there’s that anguished lament on the cross – “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” So, just for a record of my own conjectures [I concluded in a final email to my friend], I believe Christ’s consciousness of who he was evolved and was not without questioning or doubts within himself. I’m sure you [I wrote my friend] are aware of other traditions/writings rejected by Councils at Nicea. Try tracing down the apocrypha to discover whether Jesus was in what is now the UK or Japan, or got married (which would certainly be expected in those times), or what his relationship with Mary Magdalene was, or the miracles in the rejected Gospel of St. Thomas. There has recently been an archaeological find (forgot the particulars) which seems to support the idea that Jesus may have sailed on one of his uncle’s commercial trading ships during the missing years of Biblical account. Details. Not on my required list, even if I believe they may have happened.

So that’s where I’m closing this. And I wish the same closure for all my readers, details not required for salvation. Love, Mercy, Forgiveness. Give and you shall receive. 

Below: had this phone for 6 mos., time to try videos.

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Thomas "Sully" Sullivan