To the Exiles Who Still Love Jesus by Eunike Jonathan

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An Open Letter to Those Cast Out by Religion but Still Drawn to the Heart of Christ:

To those who once led with sincerity. To those who shepherded others with conviction, taught truth with reverence, and prayed faithfully through doubt. You built the table, tended the flock—and when you dared to ask new questions or acknowledge the ache, you found yourselves quietly pushed to the margins.

My name is Eunike. I write not from the outside but from the inside-out—as one who once upheld what I now critique. I’ve known both complicity and exile. I watched my father, a pastor, be dismissed for asking questions born of love, not rebellion. He never returned. And I, too, have felt the pull to disappear—to shield my faith from further misunderstanding.

But I write not just to address a personal ache, but to name something deeper. This exile isn’t always about one moment—it’s often about what that moment touched: questions of theology and politics, identity and belonging, justice and power. For some, it was the atonement. For others, tithing, sexuality, or who gets to lead—and who’s expected to stay quiet. What seemed small at first—just a conversation or a shift in conviction—became the line no one was allowed to cross.

But I don’t believe the answer is withdrawal. I believe the world still needs us—not removed in disillusionment, but present in love. Not louder. Not silent. But faithful.

When the Medicine Made Us Sick

You followed the regimen. Memorized the verses. Taught faithfully. Listened well. You prescribed the medicine: fear as reverence, shame as sanctification, silence as humility—believing it would heal.

But over time, something ached. Beneath the obedience, the fruit was bitter: anxiety, disconnection, deep fatigue of soul. And when you tried to name the pain, you were told you were the problem.

You weren’t. You were just among the first to give language to what others still carry wordlessly. This is what spiritual manipulation can look like—not just abuse, but well-meaning structures that mask control as order, performance as fruit. It arises not only from broken intentions, but from broken visions of what it means to be human—where value is measured by usefulness rather than union.

Your soul knew better.

Somewhere in the quiet, you heard the voice of the Great Physician—not in the formulas, but in the stillness—an internal sense of what makes society meaningful (Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). Your grief was not rebellion. It was discernment. “That’s not My voice. That’s not My medicine.”

Come to Me…I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).

Even in your disillusionment, you followed Him—not toward cynicism, but toward healing. This letter is a companion for that journey.

Rewriting the Prescription or Throwing The Bottle Away

It’s one thing to leave what harmed you. It’s another to resist rebuilding it in your own image—or disappearing altogether.

Many of us, especially those who led, have found ourselves handing out the very medicine we’ve come to question. Not from hypocrisy, but from formation. We taught what we were taught. And when others drifted, we feared they were lost—not realizing they might be waking up.

When I walked away, I told myself I was free. But I hadn’t yet healed. I had only changed scenery. Pain—unexamined—tempts us either to replicate what we left or to shut down entirely.

Some respond by constructing new systems—more inclusive, better branded, but still driven by control. Others disappear, unsure if trust is still safe. Both are human. Both are incomplete. Neither reflects the heart of the Healer.

What we need isn’t a better prescription—it’s Presence—the kind that heals not by demanding change, but by restoring communion.

If we’ve experienced the wounds of spiritual control, our healing must not produce its mirror. We can’t answer exclusion by creating new insiders. The call is harder, deeper: to speak to the systems and leaders who once failed us—not with retaliation, but with the clarity that comes from being loved. We are called to live in a web of relationships that includes even our enemies (John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) —not by mirroring their fear, but by refusing to close the door behind us.

Sometimes what we’re facing isn’t just a crisis of doctrine—it’s a crisis of imagination. A failure to name what is truly good, not just a misunderstanding of truth.

The only authority worth following is the One who kneels to serve (John 13:14). The only voice worth trusting is the Love that heals (1 John 4:16-19).

The Great Physician never offered a program or protocol. He offered Himself. And He invites us to do the same—not perfectly, but honestly, and in love (Matthew 5:44–45).

Living in—and From—the Great Physician

So if we are no longer living from the prescription, what now?

We live from Him. From Love incarnate. From the Kingdom that operates not through hierarchy, but through humility. Not from coercion, but communion.

This Kingdom can’t be managed or marketed. It’s revealed in small places—at dinner tables, in unrecorded conversations, in the long practice of presence. Where love is chosen over certainty, and people are invited to heal across the very lines that once divided them. (The Reformation Project, https://www.reformationproject.org).

This is the imagination we’re called to embody: where power kneels, questions are safe, and bread—not pills—is passed (1 Corinthians 11:24). We are not isolated individuals in recovery. We are relational beings—each a fragment of a mosaic, together reflecting the Image of God. To re-imagine Love is to re-imagine what it means to be human—deeply interdependent (Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2020) infinitely valuable, and bound together—in the likeness of Christ.

As Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21 (NKJV).

So we carry it now. Not perfectly, but faithfully. Not to rebuild what was, but to reveal what has always been (Ephesians 1:4).

Feasting at the Table, Not Refilling the Bottle

If you’ve made it this far, perhaps it’s because something in you still aches for the table. Not the one we built—but the one Jesus set.

You may know all the right doctrines, and still feel deeply disoriented. You may have given everything to the Church, and still found yourself outside its doors. But you’re not disqualified. You’re not forgotten. And you’re not alone.

You still love Jesus—and that is enough.

The Kingdom is not for the worthy, but the hungry and thirsty.

Your seat at the table isn’t earned or awarded. Jesus already gave you His (1 John 4:17; 2 Corinthians 5:21). No system or doctrine can take it away.

The table doesn’t belong to us. It never did. It belongs to the Love who fed the unworthy, the uninvited, the unseen. And He’s still doing it—through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).

This table isn’t a place to arrive, but to return to—again and again—to feast on Love’s goodness. A place of discovery, not achievement. Where bread is broken, wine is poured, and no one leaves empty.

The feast has begun. There is room for more.

So come as you are—without the mask, the fear, or the pressure to perform. And when you get here, don’t shut the door behind you. Leave it open—for our siblings who are still afraid, still handing out pills they don’t yet know are poison. For our siblings who’ve always been told there was no seat for people like them. For our siblings who will one day awaken to see Father for who He truly is—Love (Luke 15:17). And for our siblings who stayed close but never knew they belonged—who need to hear again:

My child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours (Luke 15:31).

This is the Kingdom the Scriptures speak of: the stone not cut by human hands (Daniel 2:34), the reign of peace that will never end (Isaiah 9:7), the movement no gate of hell can hold back (Matthew 16:18). Where every valley is exalted, every hill made low, and the glory of the Lord is revealed—and all flesh shall see it together.

You’re home.

With love, freedom, and grace for the journey,
Eunike

Eunike Jonathan is an Indonesian-born Chinese American theologian, writer, and speaker exploring identity, healing, and divine love at the intersection of faith, culture, and justice.