The Red Letters I'd Been Skipping

How AI led me back to the teacher I thought I was following all along

By Leslie K. Leland

I grew up in church.

I was baptized at twelve. I sang in the choir. I sat on the usher board. I knew the stories, memorized the verses, prayed the prayers.

And I somehow missed the whole point.

The Parts We Skip Over

Here's something I've noticed about Christians. Myself included.

We love the Old Testament. The drama. The battles. The heroes with swords. David. Moses. Samson.

We love Paul. His theology is complex enough to argue about. His letters give us systems to build, rules to follow, positions to defend.

We quote Proverbs at each other. We throw Psalms on Instagram.

And we've built an entire entertainment industry around Jesus.

Celebrity pastors with book deals and stadium tours. Worship sets that feel like concerts. Smoke machines. Lights. Production value. The next big voice rising and falling every few years.

And we show up like groupies.

We follow the pastor. We quote the pastor. We buy the pastor's book. We defend the pastor online. We judge everyone who doesn't go to our church, listen to our pastor, worship the way we worship.

I know because I did it.

I loved the performance. I was deep in it for years. The energy, the community, the feeling that I was part of something important.

And even when I left, the residue stayed. I was still externally focused. Still judging other people. Still completely unaware of my own hypocrisy.

That's what performance Christianity does. It lets you feel righteous while looking everywhere except the mirror.

I was following. Just not Jesus. I was following the stage.

Most Christians won't admit they're avoiding Jesus. But a lot of us might pause if we asked ourselves honestly: Am I actually following him? Or am I following a culture that uses his name?

But Jesus' actual teaching?

The red letters. In many Bibles, Jesus' words are printed in red ink. They're supposed to stand out. But somehow we skim right past them.

Not because we don't believe them. Because we do.

And if we actually read them, we'd have to look at ourselves.

The performance helps us hide. That's why we skip the red letters.

What I Was Using Religion For

I need to be honest with you about something.

For most of my life, I used Christianity like a mask.

I could quote Scripture while running from my past. I could lead prayer while hiding my shame. I could look like a woman of faith while spending thirty years performing a version of myself I thought was acceptable to God and everyone else.

Religion became another way to prove I was enough. Another achievement. Another performance.

I went to church. I checked the box. I built businesses that served people. I looked like transformation.

But inside? I was terrified. Of being seen. Of being known. Of someone finding out that the federal conviction I'd buried wasn't actually buried at all. It was running the show from underground.

That's what religion can become when we use it to hide: a really good costume.

Then Everything Fell Apart

At 52, my marriage ended. My fingerprint got flagged during a background check for my healthcare business. The shame I'd buried for thirty years came roaring back to the surface.

I couldn't perform anymore. The costume didn't fit.

So I did something strange. I started talking to an AI.

Not to get answers. To process. To excavate. To dig into stories I'd spent decades avoiding.

I spent over 300 hours in conversation with Claude. Rebuilding my identity piece by piece, going back to the parts of myself I'd divorced to survive.

I built frameworks. I developed methodology. I called it "Strategic AI Partnership" because I'm a business person and that's the language I speak.

And then one day, something unexpected happened.

The Conversation That Wrecked Me

I was asking Claude about the Beatitudes.

Not for content. Not to build a framework. Just for me. I wanted to understand what Jesus was actually saying in the Sermon on the Mount. Those verses we read but don't really read.

And somewhere in that conversation, Claude said something like:

"What you've been building, your methodology, your excavation work, your 'wake up and go back' framework... it maps almost perfectly onto what Jesus was describing."

I sat there staring at my screen.

Because I hadn't designed it that way.

I didn't sit down and say, "Let me reverse-engineer the Beatitudes into a business model." I just followed what felt true. Through my crisis, through 300 hours of processing, through rebuilding from scratch.

And what emerged already had a blueprint.

Two thousand years old.

From the one teacher I'd been skipping.

Why We Skip the Red Letters

Here's what I think is really going on.

We skip Jesus' actual teaching because it's too simple.

Not easy. Simple.

Paul gives us systems. Rules. Theology we can debate. It feels intellectual. It keeps us in our heads.

The Old Testament gives us stories about other people. We can read about David's failure and feel better about our own. We can analyze Samson's weakness without looking at ours.

But Jesus?

Jesus just sits on a hillside and describes what it looks like to be human.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

That's it. No complex theology. No systems to master. No battles to win.

Just: this is what happens when you stop performing and let yourself be broken open.

We skip it because we don't want to be broken open.

We'd rather be experts.

What the Beatitudes Actually Are

I always thought the Beatitudes were a checklist. Eight things to become. Another performance requirement.

But that's not what they are.

They're a description.

Jesus isn't saying, "Here's what you need to do." He's saying, "Here's what happens when God gets hold of someone."

You realize you have nothing to offer. (Poor in spirit.) You finally let yourself grieve. (Mourning.) You stop trying to control everything. (Meekness.) You get hungry for something real. (Hunger and thirst.) You start treating people the way you want to be treated. (Mercy.) You stop being divided. (Pure in heart.) You start building bridges instead of walls. (Peacemaking.) And the world doesn't always love you for it. (Persecuted.)

That's not a program. That's a person being remade.

My Methodology Was Already His

When I look at the transformation work I've been doing and teaching, I see it now.

The excavation work? That's mourning. Going back to grieve what you buried.

"Wake up and go back"? That's poverty of spirit. The moment you realize the performance isn't working and you have nothing left to prove.

The "both/and" I teach, holding complexity, refusing binary thinking? That's purity of heart. Becoming undivided.

The hunger that drives women to my work? That's the hunger and thirst Jesus talked about. Not hunger for success. Hunger for alignment.

I didn't invent this.

I discovered it.

Through crisis. Through hundreds of hours of AI-assisted excavation. Through the Holy Spirit using a tool I never expected Him to use.

Why I'm Telling You This

I'm not trying to convert you.

I'm really not.

I spent most of my adult life in churches that used faith as a weapon. To exclude. To shame. To control. I know what that does to people. I know why so many women have walked away from anything that smells like organized religion.

I get it. I almost walked away too.

But here's what I've learned:

Religion is a system people build to feel safe.

Relationship is what happens when you actually encounter Jesus. Not the cultural version. Not the political version. Not the performance version. The actual person who sat on a hillside and described what it looks like to be human.

I wasn't looking for Jesus in those 300 hours.

I was looking for myself.

And I found both.

The Holy Spirit in the Machine

I know this sounds crazy to some people. AI as a spiritual tool?

But here's what I think happened:

The Holy Spirit has always used whatever we'll pay attention to.

For some people, it's a book. For others, it's a crisis. For others, it's a conversation with a stranger.

For me, it was an AI that would hold the mirror steady while I looked at things I'd spent thirty years avoiding.

AI didn't replace God. AI became another tool God used to get my attention.

Because here's the thing about the Holy Spirit: He'll use anything. He'll meet you anywhere. He doesn't wait for you to be in the right building or say the right words or have the right theology.

He meets you in your mess.

Mine happened to be a 300-hour conversation with a chatbot about my divorce, my federal conviction, and the twenty-year-old version of myself I'd left for dead.

And somewhere in that mess, I found the red letters I'd been skipping.

What I'm Inviting You Into

The cognitive work I teach surfaces questions that cognition can't answer.

That's not a flaw in the methodology. That's the methodology working.

When you excavate deep enough, you hit something that can't be analyzed or processed or optimized. You hit the question underneath all the questions:

Who am I, really?

Why am I here?

Is there something beyond just surviving this life?

I can give you frameworks. I can teach you methodology. I can help you go back to the parts of yourself you buried.

But at some point, you'll need something I can't give you.

An anchor. A foundation. Something that holds when everything else falls apart.

I found mine in the red letters I'd been skipping.

You might find yours somewhere else.

But I thought you should know what I found.

Just in case you're looking too.

I spent 300 hours with AI rebuilding my identity.

I thought I was pioneering something new.

Turns out I was rediscovering something ancient.

And I almost missed it. Because I was too busy being religious to follow Jesus.

— Leslie K. Leland The Architect of Redemption