What If Jesus Was Serious?: A Visual Guide to the Teachings of Jesus We Love to Ignore

This is a lovely book of short essay chapters which explain teachings of the New Testament that we clearly often forget. Each one starts “If Jesus was serious…”

Examples:

• then we will trust God more and politics less

• then we will recognize the illusion of control that money creates

• then we will recognize every person as valuable

• then we will love the people who annoy us every day

• then we will avoid displays that make us seem more devout that we really are

Jethani has a left-ward bent, so if you’re a fundamentalist or social conservative, you might have problems with the book. There’s a lot in here that seems progressive, so it’s clearly not for everyone.

Each chapter has a cartoon that was drawn specifically for the chapter. I went looking and was surprised to find that apparently Jethani himself drew these.