After government school administrators tried to make a high school valedictorian remove references to Jesus Christ from his graduation speech, the student delivered the unaltered version of his speech anyway.

Liberty Counsel issued a letter of advice to the student last month, spotlighting the many points throughout the speech in which administrators had crossed out his expression of thankfulness to God, apparently citing the “separation of church and state.”

In one such instance, the student wrote that “I want to thank my Lord Jesus Christ for getting me through because if it weren’t for him I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through life,” especially because of the several medical conditions he faced during his teenage years. But the administrators told him to say “without my faith I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through life.”