The Hijacking of Jesus
What comes to mind when you hear the word “hijacking”?
Most people think of things like the four airplanes that Islamic terrorists seized and flew into American buildings on 9/11—one of the darkest days in American history that permanently changed how we fly the friendly skies.
It’s mind-blowing to realize terrorists exploited lax airport security for years because airlines feared slowing the process and frustrating their passengers. So they did nothing.
Until 9/11.
In the days and weeks after that grim apex, airports finally ramped up their security to prevent hijackings and ensure flight safety for passengers. As a result, hijackings became increasingly rare. Today, the odds of your flight being hijacked are 10,408,947 to 1.
Therefore, it’s safe to assume most people reading this book have never been on a hijacked plane.
The Standoff
But there’s another form of hijacking that has far more eternal consequences: the attempt to hijack Jesus.
Over the last several decades, progressive Christian leaders have been theologically and spiritually motivated to seize Jesus as resurrected Savior and radically reinterpret Him as a Jewish mystic or as a manifestation of God devoid of divine claims and miracles.
Biblical Christianity solidly asserts all these things based on the Word of God. But in the postmodern era, the call of progressive Christian voices “remaking Jesus” is becoming more tantalizing to many.
Progressive Christians say their “modernizing of Jesus” makes Him a more friendly and accepting figure for self-identified Christians. They say they are simply “refreshing” Jesus (sort of like Subway keeps refreshing its sandwiches). However, what progressive Christianity actually does is reject the historical and biblical narrative of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, it is unmistakably apparent that progressive Christianity isn’t simply “making adjustments” to Jesus’s image. It’s far worse: They are outright hijacking Jesus. And they are not subtle about it.
That may be startling to hear, but it’s worth pointing out that progressive Christians don’t see their version of Jesus as a hijacking. They see it as a recovery—a rescuing of Jesus from the dogmatic rigidity of traditional Christianity.
As a matter of fact, progressive teachers believe the original hijackers of Jesus belonged to the Pauline movement. They argue that Christian traditionalists were unrelenting in their assault on Jesus and suppressed His inclusive teachings—and eventually divinized Him, like a sort of Greek god.
In his classic book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Spiritual Revolutionary, the late theologian Marcus J. Borg claims that through the centuries, pagan worshipers formulated various doctrines that eventually morphed the image of Jesus into that of a divine Savior.
However, despite what progressive Christians want people to believe, their portrayal of Jesus carries significant historical, theological, and spiritualimplications, according to the Bible.
Biblical Christians contend that the portrait of Jesus progressive scholars have configured is nowhere to be found in the capsules of history or the Gospel accounts. They are caricatures concocted from revisionist theories of church history, framed by the ideological perspective of liberal intellectualism.
In this “modernized” version of Christianity, progressive Christians deceptively challenge Protestant churches with their conventional belief of Jesus as more of a “liberator” than a “Savior,” and contend that they bring enlightenment to the disconcerted minds of Christians, creating a standoff over the true identity of Jesus.
But you know what?
The Church has only become susceptible to these attacks through its own laxity in preserving doctrinal truth. We have grown deficient in the rigorous and passionate defense of the historic Christian faith.
As a result, it is now far easier for progressive theological hijackers to seize the identity of Jesus, and a big reason why we are seeing such a high number of deconversions today.
Countermeasures
Yet, despite these formidable attacks, I believe many Christians, including you, are eager to learn and ready to take back the truth of Jesus—revealed and exalted as the Son of God in the New Testament.
Just as the aviation industry enhanced security efforts after 9/11, Christians need to put a new defense strategy in place to counter the theological hijackings of progressive Christians. Sometimes doctrinal debates (not acrimonious disputes) and divisions are fitting, even healthy, for the Church to experience. It forces Christians to pay closer attention to the teachings around them and learn to stand up for their beliefs. We must be more like the Berean Jews, who “searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11) to ensure that what they were taught aligned with the Word of God.
