Reducing Jesus

To those fundamentalists and evangelicals who singularly focus on giving invitations, the image of Jesus standing and knocking on the doors of hearts, drawn from Revelation and not from the Gospels, assumes iconic status. To evangelicals of a pacifist stripe, Jesus turning the other cheek reigns supreme. To the socially conscious, Jesus embodied in the poor becomes the rallying point. To just about all American evangelicals Jesus becomes the best friend, the Savior next door. All of these are biblically based images. The problem comes when such a focus on a particular episode in the Gospels or a particular characteristic or trait of Jesus leads one to downplay or even dismiss other episodes of the biblical narrative and other aspects of his character. Jesus comes to us as a complex figure, and reducing him does an injustice to the Gospel accounts. Reducing him does an injustice to Jesus himself.

-Stephen J. Nichols, "Jesus: Made in America" (p. 88)