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An Intimate Look at a Subversive Savior

Author: Philip Yancey

In The Jesus I Never Knew author Philip Yancey invites his readers to step away from our presumptions, from the images on our Hallmark cards and the half-remembered stories of Sunday school, and see Jesus as He was to his followers: revolutionary (but not in the militaristic way they wanted or expected,) offensive, original, confusing, and dangerous. It’s far from the saccharine assumptions we often claim. It’s a refreshing although not unexpected approach. Yancey doesn’t bring anything new to the table that serious Christian’s didn’t already know, but he paints a picture of the real Jesus with passion and introspection. He’s also a great guide for the brand-new Christian who hasn’t studied very far yet and is seeking to get away from the cultural assumptions of Jesus as “a good teacher” and understand how subversive He really was.

Yancey has an interesting focus on movies. He uses it as the lens to help us think about our perceptions, and he likes to follow various Christian and secular film accounts of Jesus’ life. In these accounts, he finds the distillation of our various presumptions – from the overly calm depictions to the ragingly heretical. How much of ourselves and our culture do we layer over what the Bible told us about our savior?

Yancey argues that Jesus was not our blond-haired blue-eyed Walmart figurine. He was a passionate savior, and He must be accepted as either a lunatic or the Son of God. As C.S. Lewis himself said, Jesus didn’t leave us any other options. As the book develops, Yancey swipes aside our picturesque portrait of Jesus to show a man who got tired, who became overwhelmed, who was passionate and upset (not always unflappable), and who was, above all, deeply Jewish – something else the western world often paints over.

Two of the most effective moments of this book were Yancey’s explanation of the temptation in the desert and his view on the Ascension (which we rarely ever talk about). These were the more nuanced, newer pieces to me, and made me stop and really think about events that we tend to gloss over. What did the temptation mean, and what, specifically was the reason behind each of Satan’s temptations and what they symbolize? What did it say about Jesus that He, like us, faced temptation (and that these are all common temptations, because of the underlying meaning/appeal). This really comes full circle when Yancey takes us to Gethsemane and helps us truly see Jesus’ terror and desire to avoid not the physical pain, but the anguish of separation from His father. It’s a powerful moment, and Yancey keeps us in it for a long time, making us slow down and truly think not only about what was at stake, but about how Jesus felt: weak, afraid, desperate to be saved from the circumstances. God put himself in the place of His creatures and did not back down until the gruesome, heart wrenching act of salvation was achieved.

Jesus driving money changers out of the temple
Alexandre Bida, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Secondly, why did the risen Jesus only appear before those who already believed, and why did He leave the church to essentially fend for itself? In this, Yancey explores the best part of The Jesus I Never Knew, drawing it all together by explaining what we, Christians, were intended to do in relationship and in reaction to Jesus.

Other moments that really stood out include how Yancey emphasized Jesus’ subversive, dangerous nature and why the teachers of the Law were intent on killing Him. It’s something we mostly know, of course, but it’s a deep dive that stops and makes us really puzzle the moments out and see how the crowd must have seen and reacted to this man who advocated mercy over the law and who provided sparring miracles but was more focused on ideas than dramatic signs.

This brings me to my last point. There is a very nice section here where Yancey gets into the “why didn’t God just yell down the mountain and perform a bunch of miracles and therefore make everyone believe.” Yancey does a good job parsing this question and looking at the results of the miracles, Jesus’ reaction, and what it said about His nature that He never refused anyone who asked, and yet also never sought to do great signs. The miracles were an aside to the message.

The Jesus I Never Knew is well structured, and Yancey spends a lot of time parsing out each section and getting his readers into the hearts and minds of Jesus’ hearers at the time. As I said, despite how well done it is, it’s all basic. There is nothing brand new here (except the portion where Yancy really shines, talking about the Ascension), but this is still a solid book that lays some basic groundwork and helps us sweep aside the stagnant Jesus images with which cultural inundates us and once again focus on the God who became man and saved the world.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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