Beyond Diagnosis: Jared Wilson's Your Jesus is too Safe.

The diagnosis of the contemporary church in America has been thoroughly hashed out. There's not enough of Jesus in the church! It's now become a familiar lament around the blogosphere, and I am personally grateful to those who have been in the forefront of this diagnostic endeavor. I think particularly of Michael Horton's Christless Christianity. Click on the link and watch the video for a five minute primer on "American pop spirituality."

Okay, as I say, it's a familiar lament. I remember discussing it with an old friend, who answered with deep concern, "So what do we do now?" That was a very good question. And it's a question I didn't really have an answer for. Part of my own agenda these days is to find out how others are answering that very question. People like Tim Chester in Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community, or Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost in ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church.

The danger, of course, has always been to be content with the diagnosis, walking away smugly without even suggesting a healthier approach. Some are calling that approach “missional,” while others are simply calling for a more Christ-centered understanding of the whole of the Christian life. You can of course include Jared Wilson in that category. He's been on my blogroll just about from the beginning, and now he's written a much talked-about book, Your Jesus is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior. It is the antidote to Christless Christianity.

Jared's point is a simple one: get to know the Savior. He may not be the kind of guy you thought he was. Ed Stetzer sums up the point of view nicely in his introduction:

What we need now, as we have always needed, is a far-ranging recovery of awe over, and trust in, the sheer power of the gospel, beginning with a return to the dangerously full embrace of the God of the universe present in the saving, interceding, exalted person of Jesus Christ.

Note the descriptive terms these people are using about Jesus: radical, wild, dangerous. Jared is down with all that. His agenda is to counteract the portrait of Jesus that is more likely culturally-defined than Biblically-defined. He has chapters on “Jesus the Promise,” “Jesus the Prophet,” “Jesus the Forgiver,” etc. He is winsome and colloquial in tone (like the good blogger he is), but also stubbornly insistent about drawing his portrait of Jesus in biblical colors only.

So what would Jared's answer me to my friend's question, “What do we do now?” I think he would say, freshen up on Jesus. Read the Gospels again, and then again. Talk about Jesus with your friends. Take nothing for granted, and try to get discernment when it comes to the ways the world influences your understanding of Jesus. As Jared writes near the end of his book:

The most important way that I've tried to synchronize the disparate portraits [in the four Gospels] is by tracing throughout the entire journey the great unifying presence of the gospel. The gospel is the hope of the world—and these days it's a hope that many inside our churches are just as starved for as those outside. My prayer is that more and more churches in Western evangelicalism will repent of their relegating of the gospel to a place inside the Trojan Horse of attractive programming and performance-driven worship and self-help sermons, and once again herald it boldly as the only and supreme hope of a dying world.

That's a great quote, and I'm tempted to stop there, but Jared is nothing if not quotable (even his footnotes are not necessarily reserved for the usual bibliographic references, but are more often humorous afterthoughts or punchlines). What follows is my favorite lines from the book, and a good example of his trademark blending of humor and high seriousness: It's from the chapter entitled “Jesus the Provision”:

My friends, Jesus is not a pop song, snuggly sweater, affectionate boyfriend, a poster on your wall, self-help book, motivational speech, warm cup of coffee, ultimate fighting champion, knight in shining armor, or Robin to your Batman. He is blood.

And without blood, you die.

That's one for the refrigerator. Thanks, Jared, for taking your redemptive, Christ-centered blogging to the next level.

[BTW: you can read other posts on the YJITS blogtour right here.]