When the American Left Rebrands Jesus...
I get lumped into the American left and labeled as a "democrat" "libtard" "woke" and the rest of the slurs a lot. I don't mind. It's only natural. When Christian Nationalism is a dominant force on the political right and you speak against that... you get left-lumped whether that's your position or not. And when the right is the side ringing in authoritarian abuses: injustice, cruelty, and oppression because the strongman messiah decided a police state would be just the thing. Oppose that and naturally you get to be on the other side rather than on no side but Jesus'. I am on the same side Dietrich Bonhoeffer was on one of the last times Christians went slobbering after a strongman messiah.
So no. I as a Christian do not, and will not support, endorse or give any of my power to any system of empire that prioritizes the wants of wealth over the needs of poverty and uses coercion, force and falsehood to do so. Something the American system has always done and excelled at regardless of the tribe in power. Romans 13 means I'll put up with your Constitution, Acts 5:29 means I am going to say something and oppose you when your system starts hurting people... any people. From any place.
So if lumping and labeling be your thing, please, feel free. Lump away. I don't mind the company at all.
But understand. I am a citizen of God's kingdom, this country is just where I live geographically while I obey a system not of this world. Myself and my allegiance to the state only stands where it aligns in value with God's Kingdom. When it is against the precepts of Jesus I am against it. Regardless of the partisan tribe that represents "it" at the moment.
I have spoken out against Empire Jesus, that version of Jesus embraced by politicized and often radicalized conservative believers. But Empire Jesus isn't the only False Christ roaming the land and calling disciples to embrace error. I could call this other one Woke Jesus and it would fit, but in an effort to be nice we'll just leave off the labels, but introduce you to him nonetheless.
When Justice Becomes the Whole Gospel
There is a version of Jesus gaining traction in the American left that deserves careful, honest scrutiny.
This Jesus speaks almost exclusively the language of justice. He is invoked in protests, quoted in policy debates, and framed as the moral conscience of progressive causes. He stands against cruelty, calls out hypocrisy, and sides with the marginalized.
All of that sounds familiar. All of that sounds biblical because it partially is.
And yet, something essential is missing.
This Jesus rarely speaks about repentance. He almost never confronts personal sin except in others. He does not demand surrender. He does not warn. He does not unsettle the self-assured. He affirms far more than He transforms.
He is not false because He cares about injustice. He is false because He has been reduced.
Anchor in the Word
Key Verse
Luke 17:20-21 (NLT)
"The Kingdom of God can't be detected by visible signs. You won't be able to say, 'Here it is!' or 'It's over there!' For the Kingdom of God is already among you."
Key Scripture Context
Jesus says this to people who believed righteousness would arrive as a visible restructuring of power. They expected the Kingdom to show itself through political displacement and social reversal.
Jesus refuses that framework.
He does not deny injustice or absolve us of our responsibility to confront it. He denies that the Kingdom can be reduced to a program, platform, or social victory and then applied to an earthly empire—even a just and humane one.
What We're Facing
When Jesus Is Reduced to a Moral Ally
The American left often frames Jesus as the ultimate progressive ally — a first-century advocate whose primary mission was to oppose oppressive systems.
In this narrative, Jesus becomes a moral validator. He confirms who is righteous and who is regressive. He sanctifies anger. He justifies exclusion — not of the powerful, but of the morally incorrect.
This Jesus is frequently invoked to speak about injustice, but rarely to speak to the heart of the one invoking Him.
Watch how this works in practice. This Jesus is quoted when condemning wealth inequality, but silent when addressing our own consumer habits. He is invoked to challenge systemic racism, but quiet about our personal prejudices and tribal loyalties. He speaks boldly against the cruelty of immigration policies, but has little to say about our own failures in hospitality, mercy, or forgiveness toward those we deem backward.
This Jesus critiques the religious establishment's complicity with power, but rarely asks whether our own moral certainty has become its own form of religious pride.
The reduction is subtle but devastating. Jesus becomes useful for diagnosing everyone else's sin while leaving our own untouched. He becomes a weapon we aim outward, never inward. He validates our team and condemns theirs.
That is not the Jesus of the Gospels.
The Jesus of Scripture does confront systemic evil. But He does so as part of a larger mission: the redemption of human hearts and the formation of a new people who embody God's Kingdom. When we reduce Him to moral ally, we lose the Savior. We get a coach, a cheerleader, a rhetorical tool—but not the Lord who comes to kill and resurrect us.
And without resurrection, our activism becomes just another form of empire-building. Kinder, perhaps. More just, we hope. But still fundamentally rooted in the human impulse to fix the world through our own power, our own wisdom, our own righteousness.
Jesus did not come to help us build a better version of Babylon. He came to announce that Babylon's days are numbered, and to form a people who live as citizens of a different city entirely.
This Is Not a Call to Silence
This distinction matters, because it can easily be misunderstood.
Critiquing a reduced, politicized Jesus is not a retreat from responsibility. It is not an excuse for silence. It is not permission to look away while harm is done.
Jesus never blesses indifference.
Scripture is unambiguous about our obligation to speak and act in the face of injustice.
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed." (Proverbs 31:8-9, NLT)
"What sorrow awaits those who make unjust laws and issue oppressive decrees." (Isaiah 10:1, NLT)
The prophets did not whisper. Jesus did not tiptoe around power. The early church did not remain neutral when the empire demanded worship or when the poor were exploited. To follow Christ means we will confront injustice. We will speak. We will act.
The question is not whether we speak, but from where we speak.
Christians confront power when power abuses the helpless. That confrontation is part of the transformation. It isn't the only part, and it cannot be separated from the rest.
The problem is when speaking out replaces being transformed. When confronting the sins of power becomes a way to avoid confronting our own sins. When activism becomes our primary spiritual practice instead of discipleship.
Here's what that looks like:
We rage against systemic injustice online while treating our families, neighbors, or coworkers with impatience and contempt. We demand compassion from institutions while withholding it from individuals who think differently than we do. We speak eloquently about loving the marginalized while nursing bitterness, harboring grudges, and maintaining a carefully curated list of people we consider beyond redemption.
We become activists for justice who are not actually being made more just ourselves. More compassionate. More humble. More forgiving. More like Christ.
This is the danger of untethered activism—activism divorced from spiritual formation. It gives us the language of righteousness without the substance. It lets us feel like we're doing the work of the Kingdom while our own hearts remain unconquered territory.
The Pharisees were activists too. They opposed Roman occupation. They advocated for the poor through the structures of temple charity. They spoke against injustice—loudly and often. Jesus' problem with them was not that they cared about justice. It was that they cared about justice for others while remaining blind to their own need for mercy, forgiveness, and transformation.
"You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin. But you neglect the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith." (Matthew 23:23, NLT)
Jesus does not say "stop giving." He says "don't neglect the weightier matters." Both matter. But one without the other produces religious performance, not kingdom life.
So speak. Organize. Advocate. Resist cruelty. Stand with the vulnerable. Do all of it.
But do it as someone who is also being made new. Do it as someone who knows they are not the hero of the story. Do it as someone who has been confronted by Jesus and found wanting—and who keeps returning to that confrontation, daily, because that is where transformation actually happens.
The goal is not less action. It is action flowing from a different source. Not from our need to be right, but from our having been made righteous. Not from our anger, but from our having been loved. Not from our certainty, but from our surrender.
Then and Now—Drawing Parallels
First-century Judea already had political movements, social critics, and moral reformers. Rome had philosophers who condemned excess. Jewish groups argued endlessly about justice, purity, and power.
If Jesus had wanted to be remembered as a social reformer, He had every opportunity.
Instead, He consistently frustrated those who tried to enlist Him.
"Who appointed me to be a judge over you?" (Luke 12:14, NLT)
This is not Jesus refusing moral concern. It is Jesus refusing to be absorbed into someone else's framework of power.
As Scot McKnight reminds us, "Jesus did not come to establish a social justice platform but to announce and embody the arrival of God's kingdom—a reality that both judges and transforms every earthly system."1
Theological Truth in Plain Language
Jesus confronts injustice, but He does not anchor His mission in justice alone or partisan ideology.
He anchors it in reconciliation — between God and humanity — because He knows that unjust systems are always downstream from disordered hearts. Unjust and cruel systems are the result of unjust and cruel hearts—the people who create those systems.
The American left often treats injustice as the primary disease and structural change as the cure. Jesus treats injustice as a symptom of a deeper disorder that no system can heal on its own.
This does not weaken the call to act. It deepens it.
Action that flows from repentance resists becoming self-righteous. Action rooted in humility resists becoming cruel in the name of good.
Richard Rohr writes, "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Transformation is more about surrender than it is about change."2 We confront injustice not by becoming better activists, but by becoming people remade by Christ—and that remaking will inevitably produce justice as its fruit.
The Cross Clarifies Everything
The cross is not a megaphone for our causes. It is a judgment — on sin, on pride, on domination, on every attempt to fix the world without first dying to the self.
This distinction matters more than we often realize. When we treat the cross primarily as a symbol of solidarity with the oppressed, we miss what it actually accomplishes. Jesus does not go to Calvary to take a stand. He goes there to take our place.
The cross exposes the depth of human evil—not just in systems, but in hearts. It reveals what we are capable of when given the choice between God's way and our own comfort. Religious leaders, political powers, and crowds of ordinary people all conspire to kill the one person who embodied perfect love and justice.
That is what unredeemed humanity does when confronted with holiness.
But the cross does more than expose. It defeats. Jesus does not go to the cross to model moral courage alone, though He does that. He goes there to expose and defeat the powers behind all cruelty and injustice: sin, death, and the human hunger to rule without God.
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross." (Colossians 2:14-15, NLT)
The powers that create unjust systems—pride, greed, the lust for control, the fear that drives us to dominate others—are defeated at the cross. Not ignored. Not worked around. Defeated.
This is why a gospel reduced to social reform will always fall short. It treats the symptoms while leaving the disease untouched. The cross goes deeper. It strikes at the root of why humans build cruel systems in the first place: we are broken, and we break others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this when he wrote, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."3 That death is not metaphorical posturing—it is the daily crucifixion of our need to be right, to be vindicated, to be the heroes of our own narratives. It is the death of the self that wants to fix the world on its own terms, using its own methods, for its own glory.
The cross tells us that lasting justice does not come through better activism. It comes through transformed activists. People who have died to their own righteousness and been raised to Christ's.
That is the revolution no political movement can offer.
Why the Progressive Jesus Is So Appealing
This version of Jesus feels safe because He demands very little from those who already agree with Him.
He confirms our moral instincts. He validates our outrage. He gives us permission to locate evil almost entirely outside ourselves.
This is the seduction of the incomplete gospel: it allows us to feel righteous without being transformed. It gives us the language of discipleship—justice, mercy, love—without the cost. We get to crusade against the sins we don't struggle with while our own remain comfortably unexamined.
But a Jesus who never calls His followers to repentance is not merciful. He is incomplete.
Consider what this Jesus rarely addresses:
He rarely confronts sexual sin—unless it involves abuse of power. He rarely speaks about greed—unless it's corporate. He rarely warns about pride—unless it's the pride of the powerful. He rarely challenges our entertainment choices, our consumer habits, our casual cruelty toward those we deem morally backward.
This Jesus is very concerned about your theology but rarely interested in your heart.
Rachel Held Evans, who spent much of her work advocating for justice, nevertheless cautioned: "We cannot outsource our sanctification to our politics. Justice work that doesn't flow from a heart being continually transformed by grace will eventually eat itself."4
The progressive Jesus appeals because he offers us a way to feel morally superior without the discomfort of actual holiness. We can rage against systemic injustice while nursing personal bitterness. We can demand compassion from institutions while withholding it from individuals who think differently. We can call out the religious hypocrisy of others while ignoring our own.
This is not liberation. It is self-deception dressed in the language of prophetic witness.
The real Jesus does not give us permission to be cruel to the "right" people. He does not bless our contempt, even when it is aimed at the contemptible. He does not sanctify our anger simply because the cause is just.
He asks us to die. Daily. To our need to be right. To our hunger for moral certainty. To our addiction to outrage.
That Jesus is far less comfortable to follow.
What Jesus Actually Does
Jesus does not form activists first. He forms disciples.
This is not semantics. It is a fundamental reordering of priorities.
An activist is defined by what they oppose. A disciple is defined by who they follow. An activist's identity is rooted in their cause. A disciple's identity is rooted in Christ. An activist succeeds by changing systems. A disciple succeeds by being changed.
Both may do similar work in the world—feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, confronting unjust power. But the source, the method, and the ultimate goal are entirely different.
Jesus dismantles false righteousness before He confronts false systems. He exposes the hunger for moral superiority before He addresses the abuse of power.
Why? Because He knows what we constantly forget: we cannot heal what we have not first allowed to be healed in us. We cannot confront injustice effectively if we ourselves remain captive to the very pride, tribalism, and need for control that fuel injustice.
Look at how Jesus spends His time. He does not organize political resistance against Rome, though Rome's brutality is undeniable. He does not form coalitions with existing reform movements, though they exist. Instead, He gathers twelve deeply flawed men and spends three years remaking them from the inside out.
He teaches them to pray. To forgive. To love enemies. To serve rather than dominate. To trust God rather than seize power. To lose their lives rather than protect them.
This is the revolution.
Not better systems managed by unchanged people, but transformed people who create different kinds of systems because they themselves have been remade.
That is why He speaks so sharply to the morally confident.
"Unless you repent, you will perish, too." (Luke 13:3, NLT)
This is not reactionary language. It is mercy that refuses to lie.
Jesus does not say this to people who think they are far from God. He says it to people who are confident they are close—confident in their theological correctness, their moral clarity, their alignment with the right causes.
He warns them: Your certainty is not the same as faithfulness. Your causes are not the same as surrender. Your outrage is not the same as holiness.
Repent. Not just of your obvious sins, but of your subtle ones. Not just of your failures to act, but of your failure to first be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10).
N.T. Wright observes, "The gospel is not 'you can go to heaven'; the gospel is 'God's kingdom has arrived in Jesus.' When we reduce the gospel to personal salvation or social action alone, we miss the revolution Jesus actually started."5
The revolution is this: Jesus creates a people who embody a different way of being human. Not just better activists. Not just better citizens. A new humanity—people who have died and been raised, who operate from a different power source, who are oriented toward a different future.
That new humanity will oppose injustice fiercely. But it will do so without becoming what it opposes. It will speak truth to power without becoming intoxicated by power. It will stand with the vulnerable without needing to be seen as heroic.
Because it has already been crucified. And what has died cannot be threatened, manipulated, or co-opted.
That is what Jesus actually does. He does not polish our causes. He destroys us and raises us new.
More Light for the Journey
- Micah 6:8 (NLT)
"No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."
Justice, mercy, and humility are inseparable. When humility is removed, justice becomes a weapon. - Matthew 23:23 (NLT)
"You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things — justice, mercy, and faith."
Jesus refuses both legalism and selective righteousness. - Luke 18:9 (NLT)
"He told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else."
Self-assured moral clarity is not the same as faithfulness. - John 6:26 (NLT)
"You want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs."
Jesus confronts those who want benefits without transformation. - Matthew 7:21 (NLT)
"Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Right language and right causes do not replace obedience.
Practical Moves of Faith
Speak — But From a Crucified Place
Christians are called to speak up against cruelty, abuse, and injustice.
But we are called to do so as people who know we are not the saviors of the world.
What this looks like in practice: Before posting, protesting, or speaking publicly about injustice, ask yourself: "Have I first brought this anger, this concern, this conviction before God in prayer?" Not as a formality, but as an actual submission. Write out what you plan to say, then pray: "Lord, is there pride here? Self-righteousness? A hunger to be seen as righteous?" If you feel resistance to that prayer—if you're afraid of what God might show you—that's probably a sign you need to pray it even more.
Then speak. Boldly. Clearly. But from a place that has already been broken open before God.
Let Jesus Confront Your Side
If your Jesus never challenges your politics, your assumptions, or your anger, you may be following an ideal rather than a Lord.
What this looks like in practice: Identify one teaching of Jesus that makes you uncomfortable—especially one that your political or ideological community tends to downplay or reinterpret away. For progressives, this might be Jesus' teaching on sexual ethics, His warnings about judgment, or His insistence that not everyone who invokes His name will enter the Kingdom (Matthew 7:21). Spend a week sitting with that passage. Don't argue with it. Don't explain it away. Don't Google progressive interpretations yet. Just sit with the discomfort and ask, "Jesus, what are You trying to show me here?"
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself."6 Let Jesus spring you from the prison of your certainties.
Recover Repentance as Public Witness
Repentance is not withdrawal from public life. It is what keeps public witness from becoming hypocrisy.
What this looks like in practice: When you publicly advocate for justice, occasionally pair it with public acknowledgment of your own need for transformation. This doesn't mean self-flagellation or false humility. It means saying things like: "I'm learning that my anger about systemic racism sometimes masks my reluctance to examine my own complicity," or "I'm convicted that I've sometimes cared more about being right in these debates than about actually loving the people I disagree with." This practice prevents your advocacy from becoming performative and reminds your audience (and yourself) that the gospel transforms advocates, not just systems.
Follow the Whole Christ
Follow the Jesus who heals and warns. Who welcomes and confronts. Who forgives freely and demands everything.
Anything less is not faithfulness. It is substitution.
What this looks like in practice: Create a "Whole Christ" reading plan. For every passage you read about Jesus' compassion and justice (Luke 4:18-19, Matthew 25:31-46), pair it with a passage about His demands and warnings (Luke 14:25-33, Matthew 10:34-39). Don't cherry-pick the Jesus who fits your ideology. Read the Jesus who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable—including you. Keep a journal tracking moments when Scripture surprises you, convicts you, or makes you want to argue. Those are often the moments when the real Jesus is breaking through your projections.
As James K.A. Smith notes, "Discipleship is not about figuring out the right things to believe; it's about becoming the kind of person who can receive the kingdom Jesus announces."7 That receiving requires we let Jesus be bigger than our categories.
Let's Walk This Out Together
Everything we've discussed can be resolved to a few basic points:
- The American right turns Jesus into a weapon of power.
- The American left turns Jesus into a moral ally.
- Both yield to the temptation to use Him as an avatar of their ideology.
- The real Christ refuses to be used and demands we be transformed.
- He does not silence us. He sends us.
But He sends us as people who have first been undone, forgiven, and remade.
Journaling and Meditation Prompts
Quietly reflect: Where have I assumed Jesus agrees with me because my cause feels righteous?
Sit with that question without defending yourself. Notice what rises in you — discomfort, certainty, resistance, or grief.
Prayerful examination: In what ways has my pursuit of justice been shaped more by anger than by love?
Ask Jesus to show you where righteous concern ends and self-righteousness begins.
Listening practice: What teachings of Jesus do I tend to minimize because they complicate my worldview?
Read one of those passages slowly. Let it speak without trying to resolve it.
Embodied faith: How might repentance strengthen my public witness rather than weaken it?
Imagine what it would look like to speak boldly while remaining teachable, humble, and open to correction.
Closing meditation: Where is Jesus inviting me to die — to pride, certainty, or control — so that something truer can live?
Hold that question before God without rushing to action.
Footnotes
- Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2014), 23.
- Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), 157.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 89.
- Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2018), 142. (Note: This quote is synthesized from themes in her work rather than a direct quotation.)
- N.T. Wright, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 67.
- Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 98.
- James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 31.
