For a guy who spoke in parables, Jesus is surprisingly difficult to talk about. Not because He’s confusing—but because we’ve made Him that way.
Spend five minutes in a Christian bookstore or on Christian Twitter and you’ll see what I mean. Jesus has been turned into a brand, a lifestyle, a political figurehead, a theological chess piece, a “vibe.” For every statement He made, we’ve created a counter-statement, a hot take, a 12-week curriculum. Somehow, “Love your neighbor” became a multi-volume debate about eschatological implications and church governance. “Follow me” morphed into a complicated Venn diagram of denominational allegiances, moral hierarchies and merch drops.
We’ve taken the carpenter from Nazareth and buried Him under a thousand layers of commentary. And somewhere along the way, we lost the plot.
There’s a quiet panic among modern Christians that if we don’t intellectualize our faith, it will be dismissed. So we build elaborate theological frameworks, endlessly dissect Scripture and produce a relentless churn of content—devotionals, podcasts, study guides, think pieces—all in the name of “depth.”
And to be clear, thoughtful theology matters. Studying Scripture matters. Faith doesn’t require ignorance. But there’s a difference between depth and complication.
Jesus didn’t speak in footnotes. He told stories about seeds and sheep. He touched the sick, noticed the overlooked, wept at funerals. He taught with clarity, not obscurity. His words unsettled the powerful and comforted the broken—not because they were hard to understand, but because they were hard to ignore.
We’ve confused being “deep” with being dense. We assume faith has to be difficult to be legitimate, that the messier our understanding, the more authentic it must be. But sometimes the most radical truth is also the most obvious. Love God. Love your neighbor. Forgive. Give generously. Don’t be a hypocrite. That’s not shallow—it’s revolutionary.
Aaron Joseph Hall put it this way: “We need to stop overcomplicating the gospel and live simply for Jesus.” It’s a radical idea in a culture that monetizes hot takes and celebrates overthinking as a form of intellectual credibility. Simplicity might not trend, but it’s exactly where Jesus began—and where He continues to meet us.
Still, in a world obsessed with optimization and identity curation, simplicity feels like a risk. So we stylize Jesus to make Him feel more relevant.
There’s Conservative Jesus, who votes a certain way and holds a flag. There’s Progressive Jesus, who posts Twitter threads and dunks on megachurches. There’s Aesthetic Jesus, who lives on Instagram in soft lighting and hand-lettered quotes. There’s Self-Help Jesus, who wants you to manifest your best life. There’s Hustle Jesus, who’s obsessed with your calling and productivity. And of course, there’s Suffering Jesus, who exists mostly as a backdrop for our latest post about deconstruction and church hurt.
In each case, Jesus becomes a projection—flattened, curated, co-opted to support our personal brand. And ironically, in our attempts to make Him more relatable, we make Him less real.
We don’t need a Jesus who just reinforces our preferences. We need one who disrupts us.
Jesus wasn’t complicated, but He was confrontational. He didn’t mince words. He told rich people to sell their stuff, religious people to check their pride and empire loyalists to put down their swords. He told Peter to get behind Him and told a woman at a well that she’d had five husbands. He asked people to leave everything behind—not because they had a strong opinion, but because they were actually willing to follow.
He was compelling because He was clear. Not because He gave easy answers, but because He offered better questions. He didn’t need layers of nuance to be challenging—He just told the truth, and people either left transformed or left angry.
Compare that to today, where we often sanitize Jesus until He’s palatable. We quote Him when He’s poetic but ignore Him when He’s demanding. We wear the cross as an accessory but dodge the actual call to carry it. We turn His Sermon on the Mount into content for our mood board, not instructions for our lives.
It’s not that we don’t know what Jesus said. It’s that we’re afraid to take Him at His word.
In church spaces, especially for those raised in evangelicalism, faith can feel performative. You learn the right lingo. You raise your hands at the right time. You listen to worship music during your quiet time, read a daily devotional, maybe post a Bible verse on your Instagram story when you’re feeling extra spiritual. All fine things—until they become a mask for insecurity or worse, a replacement for actual trust in Jesus.
We’ve made discipleship a performance review. And so we burn out. We doubt. We deconstruct. We walk away, not because Jesus failed us, but because the religious system built around Him did.
But the actual invitation of Jesus is less about achieving and more about abiding. “Come to me, all who are weary,” He said, “and I will give you rest.” That doesn’t sound like someone trying to sell you a new productivity method or argue about doctrine on TikTok. It sounds like someone who sees through the noise—and still chooses to stay close.
Rick Warren once said, “Let the Spirit change your way of thinking and make you into a new person.” The idea isn’t to endlessly refine your theology until it’s airtight, but to let Jesus’ simple words transform your posture, your attitude, your relationships. The call has always been to be changed, not just informed.
So here’s the uncomfortable question: What if Jesus actually meant what He said?
What if the point of Christianity isn’t to win arguments or craft flawless theology, but to love people like He did? What if we stopped trying to make Him more complicated and let His words stand on their own?
It’s easier to debate Scripture than to obey it. It’s safer to theorize about love than to actually practice it. But faith isn’t proven by how much we know—it’s shown by how well we live.
You don’t need a seminary degree to feed the hungry, welcome the outsider, visit the sick or forgive your enemies. You just need to believe Jesus meant it.
If you’re feeling spiritually exhausted—burned out, confused, cynical—maybe the solution isn’t to go deeper. Maybe it’s to go simpler.
Start with Jesus. Not the brand. Not the doctrine. Not the content strategy. The actual person.
Read His words. Pay attention to who He prioritized. Notice who He critiqued. Ask what He’s inviting you into.
Chances are, it’ll be harder and more beautiful than you expect. Not because it’s complicated—but because it’s costly.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
