How do you help people understand who Jesus truly is? How do you break through the half-truths and misconceptions?

You do what Jesus did—you tell stories.

Jesus told parables to shake awake hearts so they could see what they needed to see. To shake the self-righteous from their arrogance, He told the story of a good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). To shake the small-hearted from their coldness, he told the story of a father who threw a party for his son (Luke 15:11-32). And to those about to reject Him, He told a story about a vineyard owner who sent his son to collect the harvest, only to have that son killed by the vineyard’s tenants (Luke 20:9-19). Through this story, Jesus sought to wake up the Pharisees who—blinded by their own misconceptions of the Messiah—would crucify Him to protect their own interests (Luke 20:19). By killing Him, the Son, the Pharisees were sealing their own doom. They would trip over the very stone they cast away (Luke 20:17).

Every age needs to be shaken out of its misconceptions of Jesus. Perhaps our age needs to be shown that Jesus isn’t the distant, otherworldly figure reflected in some of our cathedral artworks, the revolutionary able to be shoehorned into a favorite political cause, or the feel-good guru happy to bless any and every lifestyle choice. No, Jesus is the One who loves lavishly and pronounces judgment. He’s dangerous but good.

Through his Narnia stories, C. S. Lewis sought to awaken an indifferent world to the Christ it thought it knew, but didn’t. Would it see the Jesus it had cast aside through the lion named Aslan? Would it see Him as the dangerous-but-good Savior He really is?

Let’s all continue to tell the stories about the One who explodes all our misconceptions.

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Jude 1:17-25