For a lot of Christians, Jesus has somehow become both the center of the faith and strangely distant from real life.
He’s often presented as serious, polished and permanently disappointed — more like a fragile religious mascot than someone who walked into chaos, shared meals with notorious people and built His inner circle out of rough-edged fishermen.
Judah Smith thinks that version of Jesus is part of the problem.
“Jesus has, I think, for a long time been portrayed as very serious,” Smith said. “To a fault. Meaning I don’t think a lot of seekers or believers have it in their thinking at all that Jesus actually had a sense of humor.”
Smith isn’t trying to make Jesus trendy or casual. He’s arguing something much more disruptive: many Christians have reduced Jesus into someone far smaller, safer and more controllable than the person revealed in the Gospels.
“The way we were created, the way we function, our emotions, our soul, our laughter, our joy — all of these things reflect — they are because of God’s glory and they are for God’s glory,” Smith said. “Jesus was the full and complete embodiment of all that God is, and so, no doubt, He would have enjoyed a good time.”
That perspective changes how Smith reads the disciples too. Church culture tends to treat them like stained-glass superheroes instead of the deeply ordinary men they actually were when Jesus called them.
“We have the luxury of reading the end of the book, so we look at these 12 guys with colored glasses,” Smith said. “We know all of these guys do great things later in life. So we minimize how rough, ragged and ridiculous they were when Jesus chose them to be His earthly crew.”
Smith laughed while describing Peter as “a cussing sailor,” but his larger point lands hard: Christians often sanitize the people Jesus surrounded Himself with, then wonder why modern churches struggle to engage people who don’t already look put together.
“We have deified these guys, and because of that I think it’s reflected in our lifestyle,” Smith said. “Christians are afraid to befriend people who are rough, befriend people who are lost, people who are notorious.”
Jesus never seemed especially concerned about protecting His reputation by avoiding messy people. If anything, the criticism surrounding Him usually came from how often He chose to stay near them.
“You look at who Jesus chose, you also look at who He hung out with — Zacchaeus is a horrible guy,” Smith said. “He cheats little old ladies out of their pension. And Jesus says, ‘Let’s sit down, let’s go have dinner.’”
Smith believes much of modern Christianity gravitates toward a cleaner version of Jesus because it feels easier to manage. A carefully organized faith creates the illusion that everything is under control.
“I think the greatest illusion in all of human history is control,” Smith said. “We’re addicted to control more than anything else.”
A controlled Jesus leaves little room for tension, ambiguity or failure. The actual Gospel doesn’t work that way.
“Saving people is messy business,” Smith said. “It’s chaotic. It can’t be scheduled. It can’t be controlled.”
That messiness is exactly where Jesus spent His time. Smith pointed to the radical nature of a holy God willingly stepping into human brokenness instead of keeping a safe distance from it.
“Jesus, who obviously is God, the savior of the universe, did not come for a clean, calculated approach,” Smith said. “He came in the mess of it all and He got dirty with the people — obviously sinless and perfect, but was not afraid to be associated with people.”
Smith admitted that challenge hits close to home for him personally.
“It’s embarrassing to admit, but the reason I have either sidestepped some friendships or avoided them altogether is because [I worry] what will people say?” Smith said. “What if I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone sees me and it doesn’t make sense?”
He contrasted that fear with the posture of Jesus, who consistently moved toward people religious leaders avoided. Smith said many Christians still operate with the assumption that brokenness contaminates goodness, while Jesus introduced the opposite idea: holiness moves outward.
“The Pharisees and Sadducees grew up from a premise that dirty always affects clean,” Smith said. “But Jesus came and, for the first time, the whole New Testament narrative is that the dirty now can be made clean.”
Smith believes that misunderstanding affects how Christians think about themselves too. Even after embracing faith, many still see sin as their defining identity.
“What it comes down to, to be frank, is we still have more faith in sin than we do in our savior,” Smith said.
For Smith, the core of Christianity isn’t behavior management or endless shame. It’s trusting that Jesus actually accomplished what Christians claim He accomplished.
“God is not intimidated by sin,” Smith said. “He is in control, and the blood of His son has canceled and conquered the power of sin forever for all who simply believe.”
That confidence, Smith said, changes people from the inside out far more effectively than fear ever could.
“When we find that place of just trusting God and realize we are righteous permanently and our past, present, future sins are forgiven, all of a sudden there is a contagiousness,” Smith said. “We discover things like self-control and morality and purity — these things we’ve strived for our whole life that don’t come by discipline, but come by a real trust in the person of Jesus.”
