Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church

by Rick Lawrence

Genres: Nonfiction, Theology, Religion, Christian

208 pages, Paperback

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

Rick Lawrence is the long-time editor of GROUP magazine and co-leader of the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. He also speaks frequently for conferences and workshops, consults for national research organizations, and publishes prolifically—with 31 books (authored, coauthored or edited), hundreds of articles, and a small-group curriculum to his credit.

Reviews

[Sean Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Everyone should read this. It is so relevant for the world today, especially the Western church.

[Conrad Gempf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that challenges modern Christians to re-think assumptions about 21st century life in light of Jesus. There’s something here to challenge everyone, whatever side of whatever debate you start on.

[Panda Incognito · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Rick Lawrence reflects on ways that the American church has "edited" Jesus to fit with contemporary cultural sensibilities. He notes that lots of people are leaving the church or feel bored with faith because they haven't even met the real Jesus of Scripture, and are rejecting a distorted version of Jesus that people have softened or altered to fit with their preferences. This book focuses on the topic in a holistic way, rather than singling out particular sides of the political divide, and steps on toes from many angles.

Lawrence writes about ways that Christians have tried to combine the kingdom of God with their political and governmental goals, and he writes about issues like the marginalization of the poor, the softening of Jesus's difficult teachings and exclusive truth statements, and the tendency to reduce a relationship with Jesus to following Scripture-based life management principles. These and other chapters explore common issues in a thought-provoking way, contrast contemporary assumptions with explicit teachings in Scripture, and then list some key ways that people can follow "the unedited Jesus." There are also discussion questions at the end of each chapter for individuals or groups.

I had a few critiques here and there, and sometimes felt that when the author shared quotes from other people to illustrate something bad or negative, he didn't choose examples that were strong enough on their own to support his arguments. I thought that when he unpacked some of these quotes, he sometimes read additional problems into them in order to make his point. Maybe the original speaker or writer really meant all of these problematic ideas and implications, but I could also see different ways to interpret the same quotes. Without more context, I couldn't tell if Lawrence was exactly right, or if he was making someone else's position sound worse than it really was.

This book is a thoughtful guide to an important subject. This book can be helpful for Christians in many different stages of life, and can be a great book for discipleship groups to read together. This book covers important biblical teaching that often gets lost in churches that lean towards what's popular and culturally comfortable, and this book can help people see beyond their blind spots to better understand and follow Jesus.

I received a free copy from the publisher, and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

[Alma Hazelrigg · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed it very much, I realized after the first chapter that this would be more so principle based and less of a historical account about how the powerful life and message of Jesus became diminished and co-opted across the years (hoping for as far back as the early church)….so a great read in its own right, I was just expecting Jesus and John Wayne, so that’s fully on me lol

Maybe I’m a radical, but at times it tried to play the “both sides are extreme!” card in a way that I allowed my heart to be open to with willingness to see blind spots, but simultaneously, recognized that Jesus himself was deemed extreme by those that were seeking to stifle his influence. Perhaps a miss on the authors part to distinguish the kind of radical truth telling that Jesus did from the emphatic fear-driven politics that mankind “thrives” on, in the pejorative sense.

[Josh Tyree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence does a beautiful job of exploring the reality of who Jesus truly is—not who we’ve condensed or edited Him to be. No camp or group is safe from this book as it equally calls all of us to reflection and action—to become like the real Jesus, not the version we created and got comfortable with.

[Edward Ballard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book. I don't agree with everything the author says, but he does get at the heart of the matter that modern Christianity gets a lot of things wrong about Jesus. If you are a devout Christian looking to follow the real Jesus, this book is worth reading.