The Jesus You Can’t Ignore is a book by John MacArthur that highlights the conflicts of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The main thesis of this book is that Jesus often gets portrayed in our post-modern America as a soft-spoken, mild-mannered conversationalist who would never ever do anything to upset anybody, but that is an untrue caricature. The Jesus... is mainly comprised of scriptural accounts where Jesus finds himself at odds with the leading religious figures of the day and proves that He is not afraid of conflict.
MacArthur also takes opportunity to call out some of the Emergent Church-type Christians who, in his view, are more interested in theological conversations that are non-emotional, intellectually disconnected, and open to all possibilities than they are with the truth. I can’t help but feel like MacArthur is missing something, though. In this book, virtually all of the stories show Jesus clashing with the religious leaders of the day, while it seems that the Emergent folks are calling for civility with those who are skeptics, seekers, and the like. While I am certainly not a fan of Brian Maclaren, I don’t think that he has any problem clashing with those who, in his mind, are the modern day Pharisees.
The bottom line to me is this: why do Christians seem to have such a hard time finding balance? I completely agree with MacArthur’s premise that there absolutely a time and a place to “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 1:3), there also needs to be a humility present that says “maybe I don’t have everything completely figured out.” Call me crazy, but I think followers of Jesus are at their best when they are neither spineless nor butt-heads, when they know which battle are worth dying for and which battles are worth having a conversation about. I think this book by MacArthur brings up some very necessary ideals that we must be reminded about, but in the end, he just kinda sounds like he’s looking for someone to fight with. In the end, however, one fact remains incontrovertible: Jesus was and is and will continue to be a controversial figure who is impossible to ignore.
Legal note: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair review. I am not required to make this a positive review.
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