I cannot shake the conviction that much of the evangelical church has become embarrassed by Jesus Christ.
That is a staggering accusation, and I do not make it lightly. It is also not the sort of charge I would have made twenty years ago. I have spent enough time watching the direction of modern evangelicalism, listening to its conferences, reading its books, observing its church-growth strategies, and hearing the endless conversations surrounding “winsomeness,” “tone,” “contextualization,” and “missional engagement” to arrive at a conclusion I once would have considered unthinkable.
We have not rejected Christ outright. We still sing about Him. We still preach sermons in His name. We still place crosses on our buildings and print His words on our websites. Yet somewhere along the way, much of the visible church has tried to make Christ—the true Christ revealed in Scripture—invisible, and quietly decided that He is simply too abrasive to present to the modern world without first smoothing Him over.
Imagine for a moment that a priceless masterpiece has been entrusted to a museum. Generations of curators inherit the responsibility of preserving it, yet each one becomes convinced that the artist overlooked something.
One believes the colors are too dark, so he brightens them ever so slightly. Another thinks the expression on the subject’s face appears too severe, so she softens it. A third concludes that modern audiences will respond more favorably if a few unsettling details are painted over altogether.
None of them intend to destroy the masterpiece. Quite the opposite. Each believes he is making it more accessible, more relatable, more attractive to the people who will come to admire it. They sincerely believe they are helping.
After enough generations have passed, the painting still bears the same title, but the master’s brushstrokes have disappeared beneath layer after layer of well-intentioned revision. Visitors stand before it believing they have encountered the artist’s original work when, in reality, they are gazing at a counterfeit assembled by people who thought they knew better than the master himself.
I believe this is precisely what much of the church has done with Jesus Christ.
We have not denied Him outright. That would have been too obvious. We have done something far subtler and, in many ways, far more dangerous. We have become editors of the Son of God. We have trimmed His words until they no longer pierce the conscience. We have softened His warnings until they sound like gentle suggestions.
We have reframed His exclusive claims so they appear less confrontational. We have buried His calls to repentance beneath therapeutic language about healing, flourishing, and finding purpose.
We have wrapped the Lion of Judah in enough layers of sentimentality that He is hardly recognizable as the Jesus who dominates the pages of Scripture.
The result is a Christ who is always welcoming but never rebuking, always comforting but rarely confronting, always inviting but never commanding. He smiles constantly but never overturns tables. He welcomes sinners but never tells them to go and sin no more. He speaks often of love but almost never of judgment.
He offers encouragement without demanding allegiance and grants acceptance without requiring repentance. He has become the sort of Jesus who fits comfortably into the value system of a culture that despises biblical authority because every feature capable of provoking rebellion has been carefully filed away.
The tragedy is that many churches have come to regard this as faithfulness.
Pastors labor over sermon manuscripts wondering whether a particular verse might sound too harsh to a visitor. Church leaders hold meetings about creating environments where unbelievers will feel completely at ease. Ministry conferences dedicate entire sessions to communicating difficult truths in ways that minimize offense.
Social media erupts whenever a preacher’s tone is judged too sharp, his language too direct, or his application too pointed. Entire ministries now exist to teach Christians how to make Jesus more attractive, more compelling, more culturally intelligible, and less likely to provoke resistance.
I understand the concerns that often motivate these efforts. Scripture does not give Christians permission to be arrogant, rude, malicious, or unnecessarily combative. Our conduct matters and our speech should be gracious. We are called to love our neighbors, bless our enemies, and adorn the doctrine of God our Savior with lives marked by humility and holiness. A belligerent spirit is no badge of honor. Petty quarrels, fleshly outbursts, and self-righteous harshness have no place among those who bear Christ’s name.
That, however, is not the disease I am addressing.
The disease is far deeper because it touches the very identity of Christ Himself. Increasingly, the church seems convinced that if people recoil from Jesus, then something has gone wrong in our presentation of Him. If His words sound too exclusive, we rush to qualify them. If His demands appear too absolute, we soften the edges.
If His warnings about judgment unsettle the hearer, we quickly surround them with reassurances lest anyone leave feeling uncomfortable. We have come to assume that offense is evidence of ministerial failure rather than asking whether the offense belongs to the very Christ we claim to proclaim.
That assumption collapses the moment we open our Bibles.
