More Words from Jim Palmer

More words from Jim Palmer:

I have a public confession to make.

I am an unbeliever.

I am an unbeliever in a God who lives somewhere “out there,” hovering above the universe like a divine landlord—watching, judging, intervening when it suits him.

I am an unbeliever in a God wrapped in maleness, whose image props up patriarchy and calls domination “divine order.”

I am an unbeliever in a God who tortures people forever for getting theology wrong, then calls it justice.

I am an unbeliever in a God who rigs the game from the beginning—baiting the first humans into failure and then blaming all of humanity for it.

I am an unbeliever in a God who bypasses a woman’s full humanity by turning her into a divine incubator because ordinary biology supposedly wasn’t good enough.

I am an unbeliever in a God who demands loyalty to one ancient book, as if truth stopped evolving thousands of years ago.

I am an unbeliever in a God who engineers a fallen world and then demands blood—his own son’s blood—to clean up a mess he designed.

I am an unbeliever in a God who calls belief a virtue even when it contradicts reason, conscience, compassion, and lived experience.

I am an unbeliever in a God who mysteriously “anoints” men with spiritual authority and expects women to call it holy.

I am an unbeliever in a God whose endgame is violence—Jesus on a white horse, enemies crushed, the world burned into submission.

I am an unbeliever in a God who puts conditions on love, qualifiers on grace, and fine print on acceptance.

So yes, I am an unbeliever in 'that' God.

And here’s the thing: we made that God up.

That God looks suspiciously like our fears, our power structures, our need for control—projected into the sky and baptized as truth.

Jesus didn’t believe in that God either.

Jesus didn’t teach a distant, punitive, blood‑thirsty deity obsessed with belief systems and moral scorekeeping. He spoke of a God discovered within, among, and between us—a God of radical inclusion, boundary‑breaking love, and relentless compassion.

The tragedy isn’t unbelief.

The tragedy is clinging to a God Jesus himself was trying to dismantle.

So yes—count me out.

I am done believing in ideas that collapse under scrutiny.

I am done baptizing contradiction and calling it mystery.

I am done mistaking control for holiness and fear for faith.

I am done pretending silence is virtue and obedience is love.