Many books seem to present Jesus as wonderful, or effective, or interesting, or one who can bring you fulfillment, or even one who challenged the culture of his day and is still relevant enough to challenge ours. Few books about Jesus leave the reader disturbed or provoked. Yet as we look at the circumstances that the first followers of Jesus found themselves to be thrust into, with their lives under constant challenge, we can easily grasp how some came to the point of abandoning Him. This at times perilous state is, of course, unacceptable to the human disposition, so we had to succeed in making Jesus “safe”.

It is the desire of this book to reveal Jesus as “dangerous” or at the very least as “unsafe” as his own words and actions reveal Him to be. This is not done with a desire to repel people, though this may happen. Rather we think it is in keeping with what Jesus Himself taught to a comfortable religious world. We can read His words in the gospel of Luke (Ch 9: verse 23) where he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”