Reconstruction: Returning to Jesus

Answering the question "So what do you believe now? How is this going to change your platform?"

I spent 12 years in a partial and then full deconstruction of my Christian faith.

At first it felt like relief, but slowly that relief turned into confusion, fear, and ended in a season of terrifying existential dread.

I began to question reality itself, with a nihilistic cloud that followed me everywhere.

Eventually, I ended up in therapy and on medication. I was trying to quiet the obsessive loops in my brain that wouldn’t rest. If there’s nothing after this life, what is the point?

Why are we here on this Earth? What even matters if this is all there is? And if there is a God (which I believed there was), who was He and what did I need to know about Him?

These are not thoughts the younger confident version of me would have ever worried about encountering. But I did. At the age of 42, 43 - after a decade of tumultuous relationships and questionable life choices, I had arrived at the end of myself.

The journey back to faith was not anything like I thought it would be. But I knew that if I was going to believe anything, it had to be with my HEAD and my HEART both. I’d grown up in a faith first church and I often felt like my intelligence and logic were a weakness, instead of a God given strength.

So I started with the most basic fact I could logically prove.

I started with the man Jesus.

Think of my reconstruction like a blank piece of paper. I put a red dot in the middle. This red dot represents Jesus the man. I was going to explore the validity of His claims, His death, and His resurrection. From there I would build out tenants of my belief and faith.

If any of it fell apart here at the center with the red dot, all of Christianity would come crashing down. I guess this could lead me to religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism. But it would eviscerate Christianity. So it made sense to begin with Him.

My first question was simple: Was Jesus a real human being in ancient times?

The answer was yes. Jesus- more than any other historical figure we take for granted as real- was a real living breathing human man that lived in first century Israel.

That meant that I had to eliminate all other theories about Jesus if He was in fact a real man.

What Is No Longer Valid If You Accept Jesus Was A Real Man:

The idea that Jesus was invented as an allegory, celestial deity, or moral archetype
(à la Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus).

The belief that the gospels and Christian teachings only emerged in the 3rd or 4th centuries.

The claim that the Jesus story borrows wholesale from pagan myths like virgin birth, resurrection, or twelve disciples.

The idea that early Christians had no concrete basis for their beliefs- just fantasy or fervor.

Any modern ethnocentric image of Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed Western man.

The idea that if you don’t trust the Bible, you can’t trust anything about Jesus.

The assumption that because miracles are hard to prove, Jesus must not have existed.

The notion that serious historians are split 50/50 on Jesus’ historicity.

The red dot started like this: Jesus is a real man, rooted in time and space, born under Roman occupation, in a Jewish town, to a Jewish family, with Jewish teachings.

Then I had to contend with who Jesus claimed to be. That was the second question. There were five possible answers to this question. The goal was to eliminate all but one answer, and then explore that answer as deeply as I could.

Possible Answers:

1. A Jewish Apocalyptic Prophet (Secular Historic View)

2. A Regular Prophet (Islamic View)

3. A False Prophet (Jewish View)

4. A Moral Philosopher & Teacher (Progressive View)

5. Fully God // The Promised Messiah (Biblical View)

The conclusion I came to here is that all four answers (#1, 2, 3, & 4) were arguments that were found to be wanting…. According to the Scriptures (both the Tanakh - the Jewish word for the Old Testament, and the New Testament).

Now I know what you’re going to say – what if the Bible/Scripture isn’t sound? Fair enough, and I did end up going there. But before I did, I had to look at the claims of who He was.

Based on all the texts we have of Jesus, numbers 1-4 didn’t add up. You can read why at the bottom of this article.***

That left option #5 - Jesus claimed to be Fully God - the Promised Messiah.

Bold claim.

I wasn’t ready to add this to my red dot quite yet, but with all other options gone, I had to dig deep.

Question number three was layered. I asked myself….

“What foundational truths do I need to believe in order to buy into the idea that Jesus is the Son of God and the Jewish Messiah?”

Three foundational truths had to be proven.

1. FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH #1: First, the Gospels are reliable eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection.

2. FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH #2: Second, Jesus did in fact die and rise again three days later.

3. FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH #3: Third, that God can and does perform miracles that override natural laws that govern the Earth.

Could I believe what the gospel accounts said about Jesus? Did He truly rise from the dead? And does God perform miraculous signs and wonders that work outside of the laws that govern this planet?

What I learned is that the gospel accounts are written as eyewitness accounts, and if it weren’t for the miraculous claims, would be widely accepted as reliable by nearly all historians. The issue is that people struggle to believe the miracles, which is why they’ve been called into question so much.

They were written very close to the time of the actual events. Too early to be posed as myth (since so many people were alive then), and too public to be propaganda. We generally hold many historical facts to be true without question, even with ancient documents that aren’t nearly as reliable as the gospel accounts.

We have more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. For example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars has 10 manuscripts with the earliest being written 900 years after the events.

The gap is TINY in terms of historical documents, and transmission was both careful and widespread.

The fact that there are slight differences in focus, personality, and emphasis actually point to a stronger argument for independent eyewitnesses. This is explained a lot more in depth in the book Cold Case Christianity. If this were a fabrication, you’d see smoothed out discrepancies. It’s far too coherent to be chaotic and mythical, and too varied to be some propaganda based conspiracy.

Next, there are a LOT of embarrassing and counterproductive details in the Gospel that don’t make sense to include… unless it’s true. Peter is portrayed as a coward, women are the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and the disciples are regularly rebuked by Jesus. Nobody invents stories that weaken their position unless they’re true.

There is also corroboration from non Christian sources. Josephus mentions Jesus’ crucifixion, Tacitus (a Roman historian) confirms the same, and Pliny the Younger references the early Christians and their devotion to a crucified man named Jesus.

Lastly, the people who claimed to see the resurrected Jesus had nothing to gain and everything to lose. They were persecuted, martyred, and lived in poverty. They were killed for their testimony. This is also a strong argument for the truth of the resurrection as well.

That led me to foundational truth number two. Did Jesus really die and come back to life three days later?

First, we know for a fact Jesus died by crucifixion.

The body was not found, even with Jewish leaders who would have loved to produce a body. Even in the Gospel accounts, the earliest explanation offered by Jewish leaders wasn’t that the body was still there... it was that the disciples stole it (Matthew 28:11–15). This response implicitly acknowledges that the tomb was empty. If it wasn’t, there would’ve been no need for a cover story. The need for an alternative explanation supports that fact by implication.

Over 500 people saw the risen Jesus and testified to that fact.

The disciples were fundamentally and permanently transformed. If you’ve ever tried to change yourself, think about how hard it is to change a habit, even when there’s an incentive to do so. These men were incentivized to stop believing in Jesus and they never did.

I’ve mentioned this book once but Cold Case Christianity is an excellent book if you’re getting stuck here on these points.

At the end of the day, the alternative theories about where and what happened to Jesus… don’t add up.

1. The disciples stole the body

2. They went to the wrong tomb

3. It was a hallucination

4. Jesus didn’t actually die

5. The resurrection was a myth that developed later

All of these theories fall apart pretty spectacularly.

The best explanation for the empty tomb, the post-crucifixion appearances, the radical conversions, and the birth of the Christian movement is that Jesus actually rose from the dead… just as He said He would.

Lastly, could I believe that God would perform a miracle outside of the laws of time and space that govern our planet?

This didn’t take me long to figure out. If God does exist as an intelligent designer living outside of time and space, miracles are not illogical at all. As CS Lewis said, “If there is something beyond nature. Then it can interrupt nature.”

There’s strong philosophical support for the concept of an Intelligent Designer. It’s called the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Science confirms there was a beginning to the Universe.

“Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause.”

That means God created the laws that He can rightfully interrupt or suspend at any time. Plus, there are SO MANY documented miracles among all different people groups and times, to suggest that miraculous events cannot happen would take greater faith than to believe it’s possible.

At this point, I had answered two very important questions. Was Jesus real? Yes. Who did He claim to be? The Son of God.

That led me to my next wrestling. With this big all knowing intelligent designer and His son Jesus, why on Earth did He have to die? What was the point of this violence?

This brought me right into the heart of Judaism. I was now no longer in the gospels, but in the Old Testament, where God showed up to this man named Abraham and made a covenant with him.

Now that I had belief in Jesus as the son of God, I started to try to understand the point of His death.

In short, Jesus had to die because He was the final atoning sacrifice in a long, covenantal story between God and humanity. His death fulfilled the terms of the Old Covenant, satisfied the need for divine justice, and opened the door to ALL people having access to Him through Jesus and the forgiveness of sins.

The Context (That Makes It Make Sense):

1. God’s Covenant with Israel (Old Testament):

   • Sin brought separation from God.

   • The Law provided a way to temporarily cover sin through animal sacrifice… innocent blood for guilty people.

   • But it was never enough to change hearts permanently (Hebrews 10:4).

2. The Messiah’s Role:

   • The Jewish Scriptures prophesied a suffering servant (Isaiah 53) who would bear the sins of many.

   • Jesus is this servant (the only sinless human) able to act as both High Priest (offering the sacrifice) and the Lamb (the sacrifice itself).

3. Why Death?

   • Because justice and mercy had to meet.

   • If God simply “forgave” without justice, He’d be unjust.

   • If He only judged, no one would survive.

   • So He took the judgment on Himself.

4. What Did His Death Accomplish?

   • It fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17).

   • It broke the power of sin and death (Romans 6:9).

   • It tore the veil between humanity and God (Mark 15:38).

   • It established a New Covenant based on grace, not works (Luke 22:20).

In order for me to really understand this fully, it required a return to Judaism, Torah, and the law. The oldest Monotheistic religion and the covenant between God & His people. There was a lot to unpack here, but I realized when you separate Jesus from Judaism, things go sideways. Which led me to my next realization (and subsequent question).

There was a LOT of Jewishness in the story of Jesus.

In fact, I started to feel like I was relating more to Judaism as a follower of Jesus than any other type of faith and that was confusing.

I’d grown up in a Church that made it very clear that the promises of God were now fulfilled in the Church.

But that’s not what Scripture was saying as I read.

Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent for the whole world. He fulfilled over 300 prophecies throughout the Old Testament, and yet - Jews were expecting that he would come and conquer the land politically and militarily. They expected him to rebuild the kingdom of Israel. When that didn’t happen in the way they expected, Judaism faced a problem:

There was a split between those who saw Jesus as the Messiah and those who saw Him as a false prophet.

All the first believers and followers of Jesus were Jewish. This was Jesus fulfilling the law and completing the sacrificial system. Christianity didn’t start as a new religion. It was a Jewish movement declaring the Messiah had come.

THE FIRST BELIEVERS WERE JEWISH. Jesus was (and is) Jewish. Scripture says He’s returning to Jerusalem. No one was trying to start a new religion.

The break between Judaism and Christianity came through mutual betrayal, fear, and power.

• Some Jewish leaders feared Roman backlash and rejected Jesus.

• Gentile believers flooded the Church and didn’t understand Jewish roots.

• Over centuries, the institutional Church persecuted Jews (Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms), wrongly calling them “Christ killers.”

That poisoned the well. Judaism came to see Christianity not as fulfillment, but as oppression. Rabbinic Judaism redefined itself after the Temple fell (70 AD). No more sacrifices. No more priesthood.

So they leaned fully on:

• Torah study

• Oral law

• Rabbinic authority (Talmud)

Christianity said, “Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial system.” Judaism said, “We’ll reinterpret it.”

And the paths diverged.

Jesus was Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. The early church met in synagogues, celebrated the feasts, read Torah, and saw Jesus as the fulfillment, not the replacement.

And then… formalized Christianity severed the root.

It started subtly:

• Gentiles came into the faith.

• Rome’s influence grew.

• Anti-Jewish sentiment bled in.

Then it got violent:

• 325 AD – The Council of Nicaea banned Passover in favor of Easter, explicitly to separate from “those detestable Jews.”

• Centuries of forced conversions, expulsions, and massacres followed.

• By the Middle Ages, the institutional church had cast Israel aside and replaced her in theology and practice.

So what got lost?

• The Sabbath became Sunday.

• The Feasts of the Lord were buried under manmade holidays.

• The Torah was dismissed as “legalism.”

• The Jewishness of Jesus was erased in art, liturgy, and language.

• The entire story of redemption lost its roots in covenant.

It’s no wonder modern Jews see Christianity as a foreign religion.

This explained that despite my return to Jesus and believing fully in His divinity and resurrection, I still wasn’t feeling super “Christian”.

Christians should have never deviated from the root of their faith. We were grafted into the covenant God made with the Jewish people.

I claim to the conclusion that returning to that original Biblical root is essential to really truly understanding what it means to follow Jesus.

I feel as if I’m standing in the middle, longing for Jesus, rooted in the Torah, holding both the Gospels and the Prophets, and wondering: Is anyone else here?

It seemed that for me to walk this path, I wasn’t going to fully align with the Western version of Christianity, nor the current model of Judaism (which rejects the Messiah).

Maybe the reason this middle place feels empty is because I was called to stand in it. To make space, to speak truth, and to remind others of the root.

I also have found some amazing voices in the Messianic Jewish community. These men and women never left their Jewish identity behind. They didn’t convert from Judaism to Christianity… they fulfilled their Jewish faith in the Messiah.

They are living proof that following Jesus doesn’t mean severing Jewish roots. In fact, many Messianic Jewish congregations keep the feasts, observe the Sabbath, speak Hebrew prayers, and study both the Tanakh and the New Testament as one continuous story.

This remnant exists today just as it did in the early Church… when all the apostles, writers of Scripture, and the first believers were Jewish. Paul even writes in Romans 11 about this remnant, explaining that not all Israel rejected the Messiah, and that God has not rejected His people, but rather, some branches were broken off so others (Gentiles) could be grafted in.

This is where I’ve landed.

“Do not boast against the branches. You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”
—Romans 11:18

People have asked me:

1. “So what do you believe today?”

2. “Are you going to become a Christian influencer?”

3. “What’s changing about your online platform?”

This is what I know standing in the middle place.

I am a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish Messiah foretold by the prophets, revealed in the Gospels, crucified, resurrected, and returning again in glory.

I believe He is the fulfillment of the Torah, the true Passover Lamb, the Living Word, the Son of God, and the rightful King of Israel and the world.

I follow Him not only in belief but in practice-
Anchoring my life in His teachings,
Seeking the fruit of His Spirit,
And surrendering to His authority even when it's uncomfortable.

As a Gentile, I have been grafted into the covenant family of God- not by blood, but by mercy. I honor the roots of my faith: the Scriptures, the Feasts, the Sabbath, the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not out of obligation, but out of love and reverence.

I follow Jesus,
I trust the Scriptures,
I walk in repentance and joy,
Until the day He comes again.

xx Julie

P.S. I realize I didn’t really answer the question “How is it going to change my platform?” because I do not know. But you can safely assume I won’t be rebranding as a Christian business influencer.

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*** To keep this article from getting too long, I put some of the reasons for why all four other options didn’t hold up for me:

OPTION #1: A Jewish Apocalyptic Prophet (Secular Historic View)

Definition: This view says Jesus expected the end of the world within his lifetime and preached imminent divine judgment and deliverance — like other figures of his time.

Why it falls short:

• Jesus didn’t predict the end of the world — he spoke of the coming of the Kingdom of God, which he said had already arrived in some sense (Luke 17:20–21).

• He distinguishes himself from other prophets: “The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom is preached” (Luke 16:16).

• He places himself at the center of eschatology: “The Son of Man will come in glory... and separate the sheep from the goats” (Matt 25:31–32) — he claims to be the judge, not merely the announcer.

• His moral authority goes far beyond a prophet’s — “You have heard it said… but I say to you” (Matt 5).

Conclusion: Jesus used apocalyptic language, yes — but he wasn’t merely an apocalyptic prophet. He positioned himself as the fulfillment of apocalyptic hope, not just its herald.

OPTION #2: A Regular Prophet (Islamic View)
Definition: He was like Isaiah or Jeremiah — a spokesman for God, but not divine.

Why it falls short:

• He accepted and affirmed worship (Matt 14:33, John 9:38), which no regular prophet in Jewish tradition ever did.

• He forgave sins — a divine prerogative (Mark 2:5–7).

• He claimed oneness with God — “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58), echoing God’s name in Exodus 3.

• Prophets point to God. Jesus says, “Come to me, all who are weary…” (Matt 11:28).

Conclusion: Jesus cannot be just a prophet. His claims to divine authority are unique and radical, even blasphemous by standard Jewish definitions — unless they’re true.

OPTION #3: A False Prophet (Jewish View)
Definition: Jesus was not the Messiah. He may have been sincere, but he misled people and did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies.

Why it falls short:

• He fulfilled multiple Messianic prophecies (Isaiah 53, Micah 5:2, Zechariah 9:9).

• He demonstrated moral perfection — even enemies said, “I find no fault in him” (John 18:38).

• His resurrection claim was verified by multiple early witnesses (1 Cor 15:3–8) — the cornerstone of the movement.

• False prophets seek gain, power, or violence — Jesus laid down his life and preached enemy love.

Conclusion: Jesus fails every test of a false prophet. He was too consistent, too self-sacrificing, too revered after death by eyewitnesses who had no incentive to fabricate.

OPTION #4: A Moral Philosopher & Teacher (Progressive/Philosophical View)
Definition: Jesus was a powerful moral philosopher or symbolic figure whose teachings (e.g. love, humility, justice) inspire but aren’t necessarily tied to divine claims or resurrection.

Why it falls short:

• His claims were not merely moral — he claimed ultimate authority over life, death, sin, and eternity.

• He taught exclusive truths — “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

• He predicted his own death and resurrection (Mark 8:31).

• C.S. Lewis’s trilemma: “A man who said the things Jesus said would either be a lunatic, a liar, or Lord — but not merely a good teacher.”

Conclusion: You can’t separate Jesus’ ethics from his identity. His teachings only make sense if he is who he claimed to be. Otherwise, he was a lunatic.