Letters to Jesus from an Atheist

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 1, 2026

Dear Jesus,

I am very troubled.  This is why I write you.  Also, I am very poor and I cannot afford therapy.

First, I want to apologize for not believing you’re the Son of God; this is mostly because I don’t believe in God.  I believed that you lived, Jesus, and were a prophet and a good guy.  I don’t believe in any of that rising from the dead nonsense.  If it makes people happy to believe in you, I have no problem with that.  As for the virgin mother?  I worked with a born again Christian who said she immaculately conceived.  She usually leaves out the part where she was a drug addict and a whore.

Despite the fact that I don’t believe you’re the son of God, I wouldn’t have crucified you for saying you were.  Who am I to judge?  I am writing letters a man, a mortal man that died many years ago.  So, I’m just as crazy as you.  But there’s comfort in confessing to a non-entity rather than someone whom may try to put you in a mental institution (or nail you to a cross).

Once, when I was a kid, I knocked my mom’s favorite Precious Moments statue off a shelf because I was ‘horsing around.’  (By the way, I don’t really understand the term ‘horsing around.’ I wasn’t on a horse, acting like a horse, or doing anything that even involved the idea of a horse.  I don’t even like horses.  They frighten me.  Sometimes when I see a horse, I get anxious, and I feel the horse knows this, and that scares me.  And I feel the horse is upset that we’ve kind of enslaved their species for years, and it may trample my face for revenge.)  The figurine was probably only fifty dollars.  That seemed like a lot of money at the time because I was nine.

My mother was so angry with me.  She screamed at me for horsing around in the living room.  She cried, and I ran to my room.  That night, she glued the broken pieces back together.  She apologized for yelling at me, which I thought was unnecessary because I deserved it.  After she fixed it, she put it back of the shelf.  The pieces fit together perfectly.  You couldn’t tell it was ever broken unless you looked very closely.  If you picked it up to examine it, you could see the clear lines where the glue hardened.

But my mother and I didn’t need to examine it to know the cracks were there.  The piece was never the same again.  It wasn’t her favorite anymore.  It didn’t get prime shelf spots during family parties.  To our guests, they were all worthless nick-knacks in a collection of figurines women collect.  I grew to hate that Precious Moment.  Those big tear drop eyes, sadly looking at me with disappointment.  It was always there.  Sometimes it was moved to a different spot after my mom dusted, yet it was always somewhere.  It bared the scars of my error.

People are this way too.  Once you’re broken, you can be put back together, and they can be better, but they can never in a true sense be fixed.  When I broke that statue I prayed for my mother’s forgiveness, and she gave it to me.  Not because of you, because she’s my mother.  That’s what mom’s do; they fix things.

I told my mother that I wanted to see a therapist, and she said,

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I just…need to talk to someone, is all… ”

“You can talk to me.”

“I know…but some stuff is private.”

“Then talk to Jesus.”

“Well, what if I don’t believe he’s listening?”

“He is any way.”

Lord, hear my prayer,

The Atheist.

Dear Jesus,

There’s something you should know.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve suffered with panic attacks.  It could strike anywhere, at any time.  A playground.  In my bed.  School.  The feeling is hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.  It’s like an overwhelming feeling as desolation, and…well…panic, rushes over you.  It causes pressure on the chest, a lump in the throat, then hyperventilation.  These attacks didn’t last long a child.  And I couldn’t explain them because I had a good childhood, and overall I was a pretty happy kid.  At first I thought it was normal, and happened to all kids.  Until I didn’t see it happening to any other kids.

That’s when I started to hide when I felt one coming.  How would I explain a hysterical fit when I didn’t understand it myself?  By first grade, I found an explanation.  I was psychic.  I assumed God (I grew up in a very religious household, I wasn’t always a heretic), had given me powers I simply could not yet understand.  After my panic attack, something bad would inevitably happen, whether it is an hour, day or several days after my panic attacks, I accredited the attack to my body’s way of sensing danger before it happened.  I could have a panic attack, and twenty minutes later hear sirens and think, ‘wow, my powers are getting stronger.’ Though we lived a block from the hospital so we heard sirens every twenty minutes anyway.

I genuinely believed that one day a Professor X like character would come to my door and tell my parents, “Lori is a special girl with some special talents.”  But my parents would decline the offer to send me away to a private school because they think public school builds character.  They’d assume it was some scam to make money anyway, and when he offered a full scholarship, they’d assume he was a pedophile.  As he left, he would tell me through telekinesis, “You have a very special gift, and I can help you.”

I would then run away, but not before I had a tearful and dramatic moment standing besides my parents bed while they were sleeping.  I would take that Precious Moment statue with me, and run away with Cyclops and Wolverine.

By the time I was in middle school, the panic attacks became more frequent, and worse.  The school counselor suggested I might have OCD and a social phobia disorder (I knew I shouldn’t have told them about my friendship with trees).  I didn’t know what OCD or social phobia meant, but they were described as a type of illness, and Dimetapp wasn’t the cure.

I prefer the X-Men story.

Knowing this made everything worse.  They decided to keep me lower level classes, so I wouldn’t get stressed out.  I quickly learned to prove myself normal…on the outside.  All anxieties would be kept a secret.  All attacks would be done in private.  Why?  Because when people try to help you, they usually make it worse.

Now I am the most dangerous kind of person:  A complete mental case with the ability to fool everyone.

My attacks and depression peaked in high school and college.  Nowadays, I’m not as bad as I once was.  I’ve learned not that the secret to controlling them is not.  It took a long time for me to learn this.

The Atheist.

Dear Jesus,

There something else you ought to know about me.  I have always wanted to die.  Not in like a depressed teen way because that guy I liked didn’t ask me out to prom.  More in the sense that I wanted to die heroically.  I wanted to sacrifice my life for someone else’s.  But I did want to die at the end.

At a very young age, in order to go to sleep at night, I would lay in my bed pretending I was in a hospital bed, dying.  Everyone was around me, giving me love.  I was at peace.  This was also back in the time when I believed in life after death, and I believed in heaven.  Perhaps I saved a baby from a burning house.  Perhaps I pushed someone out of the way of a falling chandelier, only for it to crash upon me. Perhaps I saved an old woman in a parking lot, from someone driving on their cell phone, only to get run over. It wasn’t suicide I dreamed up.  It was dying in such a way that heaven would rejoice how brave I was.  Though it wouldn’t be bravery at all, if your intentions were death.  When I was younger, my obsession with death wasn’t stemmed from depression, but rather excitement. I’m not saying it was healthy, or even normal.  It was what it was.

If heaven was real, a paradise of beaches and eternal ecstasy, then why the fuck would anyone want to live on Earth?  This is why Catholics made the no suicide rule, because their promise of an after life is so great, people would just start throwing themselves off cliffs.

Everyone doubts this, even those who say they don’t.  That’s why people cry at wakes.  I was eleven or twelve when I went to my first wake.  It was my classmate’s mother.  Cancer.  Everyone was crying.  Everyone was also saying, “she’s in a better place.”

If we knew she was on a beach with a margarita listening to Jimmy Buffet, and hanging with Elvis, why aren’t people partying?  A true believer in heaven would go up to a cancer patient and tell them how lucky they are.

Now I understood why my mother yelled at me when she gave me money for a sympathy card and I came back with a card that said ‘congratulations.’  Granted, I was a naïve child, I would’ve believed any religion my parents taught me, but I wasn’t stupid.  My faith weakened, but my interest in death grew.

I thought about running into traffic, putting a fork in a socket, because I wanted to know.  All living things have the most basic instinct, which is just to survive: to live.  I somehow lack this.

The Atheist.

Dear Jesus,

I watched a special on the Holy Grail today.  It was convincing.  An archeologist found a small alabaster cup, and he made his case that it is probably the Holy Grail.  I’m a pretty skeptical person, but it could be true.

What was more interesting to me was another historian said there is no Holy Grail.  The quest for the Holy Grail, he said, is a spiritual one, for enlightenment and self-peace.  I guess everyone has his or her own Holy Grail, and it’s different for everyone.  It could be a person, a place, a thing, drug that makes you feel relaxed.  Whatever that thing is that clears the mind of worry or doubt and gives you peace, that’s your Holy Grail.

I guess that’s what this is for me. Me writing to you: My quest for my own Holy Grail.  It’s ironic, in a way.  I’m not sure I understand fully.

Before I die, I want to know what it is… my Grail.  I want to know what it is to be a state of grace.  My grandfather says that’s the only way to get to heaven.  Being in a state of grace, and buying a presbytery indulges, which seems like kind of a scam to me.

I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to be in a state of grace, but I do think you’d have to be kind of dick to never feel guilt.  I feel like being a state of grace requires a person to be terribly confident, and even more ignorant.  I may have a lot of problems, but at least I’m honest with myself.  I think that’s the first step to finding the Grail.

I’ve heard people say New York City is the unhappiest place on Earth.  I heard someone say once that this is because there are so many people chasing their dream, and they’re not satisfied yet.  I like that theory.  It implies it’s a city full of Grail seekers: All on their own adventurous quests.  Isn’t that lovely, Jesus?

Also, Jesus, you should know I lied to you. Which I realize that’s a very bad thing. To lie to Jesus. But I’m not even really an atheist. I’m more agnostic. But I think writing letters to Jesus as an atheist is kind of funny. Isn’t that funny, Jesus?

The Atheist.