The Politically Incorrect Jesus E-Book

Joe Battaglia

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 176

Beschreibung

Jesus. He is admired and ridiculed, embraced and rejected. If you want to provoke controversy and emotional discussion, just mention His name. Jesus was inclusive when He welcomed all the weary and burdened to come to Him and experience the love of His Father. But He was not open-minded when it came to the truth. He stated that He was the truth. And this flies in the face of current politically correct thought. In Politically Incorrect Jesus, Joe Battaglia exposes the intellectual dishonesty of political correctness and presents Jesus as the model for embracing a counter-cultural faith, which empowers us to be salt and light. Be bold and stand firm in your faith when the culture demands you stand down. 

Leseprobe

What People Are Saying AboutThe Politically Incorrect Jesus

“A thoughtful and insightful look into how to be true to God and yourself.”

DELILAH

National Radio Host

“No one who reads The Politically Incorrect Jesus will ever view cultural PC the same way again. In bold, no-nonsense, biblically based expressions, Joe Battaglia strips the facade off the culture war and warns believers against the dangers of being seduced by it. The book is a game changer.”

LARRY W. POLAND, PH.D.

Chairman, Mastermedia International

“In an era when the Church seems to either be so politically correct that its message is ineffective, or so abrasive that it offends without enlightening anyone, my friend Joe Battaglia calls us to see that Jesus came to redeem the culture and not to condemn it. Jesus’ Church is designed to bring real hope and joy to a superficial culture by living out the truth in a way that meets people at their point of deepest need. Joe shows us that being countercultural does not mean being against people, but for peace and love. If you’re tired of the culture wars, this book is a must-read for you.”

JIM LISKE

President and CEO, Prison Fellowship Ministries

“My friend Joe Battaglia exposes the ease with which many rewrite the teachings of Jesus. Jesus said of Himself, I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. That sounds anything but inclusive. Battaglia builds a biblical case for society and individuals to return to the truth of the Good News in Christ, a truth entered through relationship, and the only truth that still sets us free.”

DAVID JONES

Vice President, The Palau Association

“This is an important book. It’s a wake-up call to a slumbering Church and culture, a reminder of what is true not what is popular. I highly recommend it.”

SHEILA WALSH

Author of The Storm Inside

“In The Politically Incorrect Jesus, my friend Joe Battaglia presents an intelligent and common sense approach to how a person of faith can stand up to the current issues in culture that would divide us without pointing fingers or engaging in the culture war. He has interesting perspectives that we would all do well to consider on how to be followers of Jesus to a world that wants to see the real thing.”

MICHAEL W. SMITH

Singer/Songwriter

“Joe Battaglia says what needs to be said about the dangers and impact of our politically correct world. It’s a needed wake-up call to our culture! This is a MUST READ for anyone wanting to understand our times.”

ALEX KENDRICK

Filmmaker, Facing the Giants, Fireproof, Courageous

“I’ve just finished reading The Politically Incorrect Jesus and I’m angry. In fact, there is enough in this book to tick off almost everybody. But the great thing about the book is that what starts in anger, moves to conviction, then to repentance and ultimately to action. We’ve drifted so far and most of us don’t know a way back. This book is a road map for getting back. I’ve decided to no longer ‘shillyshally.’ You will too!”

DR. STEVE BROWN

Author/President, Key Life Radio Network

“With candor and courage, Joe Battaglia takes on some of the madness of our day as attention is focused beyond the noise of political correctness to the person of Jesus. Timeless truths drawn from HIS life and love are presented with clarity and grace as firm foundations for purposeful and strategic living in our contemporary world. Read it and REAP!”

DAVID FERGUSON

Co-chairman, Awakening America Alliance

“Unfortunately, we live in a world where black and white have become dingy gray, and God’s call to be salt and light has been met by dim and tasteless Christians. Joe sounds a clarion call to be men and women of holiness and distinction, those who shine like stars in the midst of a crooked and twisted world (Philippians 2:15). Where political correctness collides with biblical truth, this book will challenge you to hold fast to the unchanging principles and promises of God’s Word.”

MICHAEL CATT

Senior Pastor, Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, Georgia

“Thank you, Joe, for writing The Politically Incorrect Jesus. I learned so much. I now completely understand my ethnicity, my color, my race. I’m a ‘Christ-follower.’ That’s it. I’ve been born again for thirty years and so blessed because of that simple decision a long time ago. After so much time passing, I just feel that your book is the definitive statement in tying my faith in Jesus all together for me.”

TOM GEHRING

Lawyer and author of Settle It!…and be Blessed

“My dear friend Joe Battaglia makes a cogent and powerful case for how we have allowed our culture and politically correct thought to shape our thinking and lives, regardless of whether we believe those things to be true. This book is a gentle, yet forceful reminder, of standing up for what one believes. I highly recommend it.”

RITA COSBY

Emmy-winning TV host and best-selling author

“My friend Joe Battaglia understands that Christians make a difference in this world by being different from this world. They don’t make a difference by being the same. Unlike the world around them, Christians are called to be theologians of mercy rather than philosophers of might. Whether they realize it or not, the world desperately needs to hear our confession more than they need to see our competence. They need to hear that we are weak and needy and desperate. And the good news is that Christians are free to admit this without fear because our worth and value and significance are not dependent on our strength, what we do, or what others think. Our identity is firmly anchored in what Jesus has done for us. Thank you for this reminder, Joe. I keep forgetting.”

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN

Founder of Liberate and author ofOne Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World

“Jesus is dangerous. And so is this wonderful book, because Joe shows us a Jesus who simply refuses to give us what we want: Affirmation of our own biases. Instead, He challenges us to change, to love, and to simply embrace the truth about ourselves, no matter how unfashionable. This is a book we need. Now.”

BRANT HANSEN

Radio host and author ofUnoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

The Politically Incorrect Jesus

© 2014 by Joseph Battaglia

ISBN: 978-1-4245-4981-8 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-4245-5008-1 (e-book)

Published by BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin, USA

www.broadstreetpublishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Garborg Design Works, Inc. at www.garborgdesign.com Interior typesetting by Katherine Lloyd, www.TheDESKonline.com Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Printed in the United States of America.

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To my family…both those who have made mewho I am and have passed on and those whocontinue to impact me daily by their love and presence inmy life. Especially my wife, LuAnn, and daughter, Alanna,who are testaments of God’s presenceand favor in my life.

Contents

Foreword by Eric Metaxas

Introduction

1. The Culture War

2. Diversity, Jesus-Style

3. March of the Trojan Horses

4. Renaming Christmas

5. Common Ground

6. Of Mice and Media

7. The Indigestion of Entertainment

8. The Obvious Will Become Obvious

9. The Upside-Down Kingdom

10. Guilt by Association

11. The Common Sense of Counter Culture

12. Golden Rules or Golden Calves?

13. Security in an Insecure World

14. The Shape of Sin

15. Steak from the Sacred Cow

16. God, Gardens, and Green Zones

17. Parable of the Fertilizer

18. The Freedom in Limitations

19. Power to the People

20. Independence Day

21. The Psyche of the Second Coming

22. The Poker Gospel

23. The Burning Question of the Burning Bush

24. A Vagrant Faith

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Foreword by Eric Metaxas

I’m so thrilled my dear friend Joe Battaglia has written this book! As those of us who know Joe would expect, it’s chock full of wisdom. Joe just happens to have the gift of making wisdom sound matter-of-fact, and when he says something profound, you almost have the feeling that you came up with it yourself!

Just thinking about this reminds me of when I met Joe, back in the fall of 1999. My daughter was three months old, and my wife and I had just decided we were moving to the Big City! So we loaded up our old rusted Ford pickup and hauled our belongings clean across this great country of ours. It was quite a journey, and then some! Snow drifts taller’n ye ever seen! Mountain lions a-leapin’ in front of the truck! And a herd o’ bison stretchin’ clean to the horizon and back—twice!

I’m terribly sorry. I’ve had a chronic cough and I’m not getting any sleep, so my brain is a little foggy. Now that I think of it, we never owned any rusted Ford pickup! I have no idea why I said that. As I recall, we drove a rented U-Haul. And we certainly didn’t drive across the country! We just drove about an hour south on the Merritt Parkway from Connecticut! But we really did move to Manhattan. That much I know for sure.

The reason I met Joe was that I had just gotten a job working as a writer for VeggieTales! During that time I got to write a Hamlet/Omelet parody for their Lyle the Kindly Viking video. And I even got to be the voice of the narrator on their Esther video! Yes, I got to be the voice in a cartoon! Unfortunately the narrator is off camera, so I don’t know for sure what vegetable I was supposed to be playing. If I had to guess, I’d say broccoli rabe.

In any case, as a result of my brand new job with VeggieTales, I was officially working “in the media,” so I got an invitation to join an exclusive by-invitation-only “Men’s Media Bible Study” that met right in the Empire State Building! All the guys in the Bible study worked in the media. At least they had at some point. Unfortunately, quite a few of them were unemployed. But the upside was that they had plenty of time to go to Bible studies! And one of the employed guys in the group was Joe Battaglia.

Um, the warden just told me I had five more minutes, so I think I’d better stop goofing around and get to the point. I remember during those Bible studies in the Empire State Building, Joe would get talking about a passage of Scripture and you’d think to yourself, “Holy cow! This guy really knows his stuff. Where’d he come from?” Of course, everybody knew Joe came in from Jersey; he drove or took the PATH train. But that’s not what I meant. What I meant was he really knew the Bible and he really knew what it meant and he could always help us understand what it meant for each of us in our lives at that time! That’s wisdom, friends! And it’s in mighty short supply nowadays. So this book is just what the doctor ordered.

So for all of you who had jobs and couldn’t attend that wonderful Bible study in the Empire State Building, you’re in for a real treat. Okay, warden, I’m ready.

ERIC METAXAS

Author, speaker, TV host

Introduction

Want to provoke controversy and a variety of intense emotions? Just mention the name “Jesus.” Throughout history, he’s been admired and ridiculed, revered and rejected, dismissed and embraced. In today’s increasingly secular society, where diversity, tolerance, and other politically correct concepts are prized, many seek to de-deify Him so He can fit into a politically correct context in which all “truth” is equal and there is a more open-minded approach to “spirituality.”

But Jesus was not open-minded when it came to truth. He stated that He was THE truth, which flies in the face of political correctness. Much of what He taught and stood for clearly clashes with the popular notions that want to redefine and reinterpret the person and teachings of Jesus, and ultimately the Christian faith, so that neither step on anyone’s sensitivities.

What is “political correctness”? For the purposes of this book, I define it as:

The “chic” moral ideology of the day advocated and fleshed out in the public square by self-appointed gatekeepers of public opinion to the point where that definition becomes “fashionable.”

But who exactly are these self-appointed gatekeepers, and what is their agenda? Are they, perhaps, trying to replace the Christian faith with a moral ideology all their own? One in which no one can state the obvious, for fear that exposing truth would be disturbing to someone? Ultimately, political correctness boldly asks us to commit intellectual suicide by assenting to what we actually do not believe. It asks us to buy into the fashionable definition of Jesus to make Him and His teachings more palatable, in an expedient way to “relate” to a wider world.

Jesus, however, calls us to be salt and light, not chameleons. If we are Christ’s representatives on earth, changing colors may allow us to blend in, but it will be at the expense of our integrity and Jesus’ admonition for us to follow His words, which are life.

Jesus calls us to be salt and light, not chameleons.

We live in a time where the issues of the day are overwhelming. We are over-stimulated, due to the constant flow of media through our minds, and so overstressed and tired that, on some days, we can’t even decide which pair of socks to wear in the morning. We need to grasp hold of a faith that can meet us right in the trenches of life and help us see past what is all around us. A faith that is THE center of our lives, with everything revolving around that. The kind of faith that acts as a filter for everything we experience everyday—in media, entertainment, politics, relationships, and yes, even in the church.

It is my prayer that The Politically Incorrect Jesus will enlighten others regarding the issues and ideology in our current cultural climate, as juxtaposed with the clear teachings of Jesus, and urge readers to embrace being who God Almighty designed them to be: men and women of counterculture faith, making a difference in a counterfeit world.

Then Jesus cried out, “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”

—JOHN 12:44–46

When we raise the flag higherthan the cross.we have a problem.

1

The Culture War

When I was a kid, the Cold War was at its height. It was the United States against the Soviet Union. We exported democracy, and the USSR exported communism. East against the West. They wore the black hats. We wore the white ones. It was easy to tell who the enemy was. Our cartoons even exploited it. Boris and Natasha against Rocky and Bullwinkle.

It was called “the Cold War” because of the frozen stalemate between the two superpowers. No one was really fighting each other. It was one big standoff, fraught with innuendo, threats of nuclear war, bluster, and bluffing. Americans were united against this common threat.

Fast forward a generation. After the Berlin Wall fell, and communism seemed to be defeated, we thought the war was over. Until a new war arose—only this time it pitted Americans against each other. Called “the Culture War,” it’s been going on for a while with no signs of coming to an end.

A number of Christ-followers took up arms against this new enemy. Mailing lists were compiled, people recruited. Rhetoric was established, and sides were chosen. Evangelicals had a new communism to fight, filled with supposedly the same godlessness.

But if you have a war, you must also have an enemy. The two go together like fire and heat. You can’t have one without the other.

Jesus was very clear that His followers only have one enemy. He faced off with that enemy as He embraced famine in the desert. Jesus’ rebuke was not about the Roman rulers of the day, or religious hypocrisy, or lack of social justice. It was not about tempting Him to fall for the lies and the power the enemy promised. Those are all heavenly things…part of the spiritual war.

If you have a war, you must also have an enemy. The two go together like fire and heat.

In this new war, the enemy did not have a face; it was an ideology. And it was deemed so terrible that a coalition had to be assembled by the leaders of the evangelical camps to fight this enemy, most surely as if they were fighting communism. The enemy was defined by their political party affiliation or their position on certain issues. It was a culture war, over earthly things.

Simply put, this Culture War is not new. Jesus faced it when He was alive, and we face it today. PC thought is not relegated solely to “liberals” outside of the church. A school of politically correct thought also resides within the church.

You see, the Culture War is mostly about power…and security. Jesus has much to say about both of those issues. He wanted His disciples then, and now, to understand that the prevailing mind-set of the day pitting the Jews against the Romans was not his concern. It still isn’t.

Herod and Pilate played the politically correct game all too well. The Pharisees wanted to remain in power over their people by setting up the Romans as the bad guys. Pilate blamed everything bad that was happening on the Jewish leaders who could not control their people. Ultimately, both lifestyles would be upset if the rabble revolted. All power struggles need to create a bad guy to justify retaining their power positions.

Jesus stepped into the midst of that first-century culture war with a new way of thinking that befuddled His disciples and all those who listened to Him for any amount of time. He was a Jew, but His own religious leaders could not tolerate Him because He was a threat. Pilate could not tolerate Him because He was a threat. So, as a threat to both control groups, Jesus obviously stood for something that was beyond them. And that’s His call for His followers today.

All power struggles need to create a bad guy to justify retaining their power positions.

Jesus is stepping into our Culture War arena in America and saying He’s beyond it. Same as He did 2,000 years ago. He’s a threat to both groups. And He calls out to his people to see beyond to His kingdom. To fight neither Caesar nor the Jewish leaders. The Liberals nor the Conservatives. The Republicans nor the Democrats.

Jesus confronts us to say that His followers have been co-opted by outside groups who have convinced us that the government could be changed and the country would become more like Jesus. Does that mean evangelicals should not be involved in government or the political process? No, obviously, they should. That’s part of being salt and light, allowing the mind of Christ to impact legislation and provide the best government for the people.

The problem is that the Culture War-mongers co-opted evangelicals to somehow believe the government could actually become the savior of the American society. Thus we’ve replaced one Savior with another savior—the political process. In the confusion, it’s all too easy to lose sight of what and whom we lift up to respect and follow.

We’ve replaced one Savior with another savior.

Jesus said in the book of John, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (12:32). Not if His word were lifted up. Not if His choice for a political party was lifted up. And not even if one of His disciples and best representatives was lifted up. No, He pointed to Himself to be lifted up. There is one very important lesson to be learned from Scripture and history: When we raise the flag higher than the cross, we have a problem.