A reader writes:
As a fundamentalist pastor I never really bought into the notion of an angry God, and as I progressed in my studies from lay minister, to seminarian, to pastor, to doctoral candidate, I concluded that Yeshua was not and could not have been the Messiah, which rendered my faith's claims to objective truth, divinely revealed, moot.
I eventually concluded that all claims of divine knowledge were specious, but I did discover that once you set aside the mythology and redaction that went into remaking Yeshua as a Greco-Roman demi-god, and just dealt with his teachings about life and interpersonal conduct, you find a man today's right wing religious nutters would nail to a post only after much water-boarding and worse.
I think your approach to the man (whose real aims and philosophy were buried, forgotten and replaced in a generation) is spot on. But I've always found that even those who collapse and twitch on the floor in ecstasy at the name of Jesus could not quote three things he taught.
The Dish 