One of the reasons I recommend that book to former evangelicals in particular is that I think it gives them a more authentic understanding of Christ’s gospel for what it actually is, which seems to help disentangle “Christianity” from the trauma they experienced.
But I always recommend some Alan Watts along side it, because it’s important for you to understand that atheism or other forms of explicit rejection are also a form of evangelism, as Watts jokes in the video above that the atheist proclaims “there is no God and I am his prophet.”
So it’s not a question of “going back” to God or Christianity or whatever, but seeing and accepting the reality that there is no meaningful distinction between without and within, and thus realizing that alienation is a fiction.
Tat tvam asi. Thou art that.
It’s true across time and people and teachings. The true religion is the religion of no religion, where things are one. That’s the promise, or heaven, or enlightenment, or nirvana, or whatever you want to call it. Whether we look to Revelation where it says that Heaven and Earth give way to a new Jerusalem, or in Buddhism where the there is no longer any temple or any gong, because the temple has become the whole world and the gong is all around.