THE PERIL OF DOMESTICATING THE GOSPEL
I’ve often felt the sting of the Master’s words to His disciples in Mark 10.
“How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God.”[1]
These words concluded an interaction between Jesus and a certain rich young man. The young man had approached Jesus with a question—by all accounts a sincere one.
“How does one inherit eternal life?”[2]
Mark’s Gospel records the Master’s response.
Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing: Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”[3]
Jesus’s reply is prompted, according to our Gospel writer, by His love for the young man. Yet, His love for the wealthy man did not remove the sting of His words. The young man departs, dismayed by the sobriety of the Master’s words. And he wasn’t alone. The response by His disciples to the interaction exhibits the same bewilderment.
“Then who can be saved?”[4]
Their honest reply is encouraging to me. Before I allow myself to explain His words away, I want to be honest and confess that I have the same exact question. What do Jesus’s words mean? What do they mean for me? And what on earth do I do now that I have heard them?
Jesus’s loving response gets to the heart of the matter: affluence is dangerous. Wealth and comfort are an environment in which faith and devotion often falter. The point isn’t that wealth is evil. The point is that it should be treated like a loaded gun. It is into this conversation that the words of Jesus are directed.
“It is very hard for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God.”[5]
In other words, our Master loves us but wants us to know (especially those of us living in the West) that we live in the danger zone. God is a generous provider, but wealth must be stewarded as though it were dangerous.
I was recently reminded that these words of Jesus, as they always do, play out both individually and collectively. I was struck by the observations of Will Herberg, a conservative Jewish sociologist and theologian from the middle of the last century. In a critique of the post-war religious revival of the 1950s in America, he wrote about a well- documented Christian conundrum. He observed that Christianity, when culturally influential in society, has often created environments characterized by prosperity, peace, and security. The conundrum lies in the fact that followers of Jesus don’t thrive in prosperous settings of peace and security. That is, the urgency expressed by Jesus in his invitation to discipleship is hard to sense in this environment. Consequently, popular expressions of Christianity tend to remove the sharp edges that marked many of Jesus’s words in favor of a more palatable expression—one that is more in line with the culture’s value system. My guess is that many of my readers would easily identify with the dynamic that Herberg describes here.
The danger of this is that it domesticates the message of the Gospel. Domestication is the process of taking something that is naturally wild and taming it to make it suitable to fit within a domestic world. The context of the Bible remains “wild” to us. It is wild in that the concerns of the characters in the Bible were very different than ours. The Gospel preached by the Biblical prophets, by Jesus, and by the Apostles—relating mostly to the glorious hope of the apocalyptic day of the Lord and the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel—is wildly out of place in cultures that have no need for such apocalyptic hopes. Domesticating the Gospel is the process of converting this radically wild message to one that affirms me and my way of life. In our world this leads to a Jesus who offers his followers peace of mind, success, and the American way of life.
The danger here is that the domestication of the Gospel causes it to lose the sharp edge of confrontation that disciples so desperately need. This is what Jesus describes as the danger zone. Instead of the faithful testimony of Jesus’s words, the domesticated Gospel always speaks with an affirming voice. It always affirms that our way is essentially right, and that those who need to change are those different from us.
On September 10, 2025, the Western world witnessed one of the most troubling displays of evil in my lifetime. I had never listened to Charlie Kirk before his murder. I am not particularly political. Since his death, I have seen stories of hundreds, if not thousands, of young people being compelled to get their lives right with God. This is truly incredible fruit to come from one’s life.
And yet, there are some competing narratives for the significance of his life and death. The idea for this article preceded Charlie’s death, but I would like to conclude the article by suggesting what I consider to be a profitable way to see the meaning of his life and death. On one hand, I understand the pull of the optimistic stories that have been flooding social media. I hope along with them that many will turn to the God of Israel and become disciples of Jesus. Yet, I am mindful of and sobered by the fact that I don’t think the Scriptures indicate an end-time revival of the American way of life. I think that Charlie’s death, rather, reaches into the danger zone—where we are dull of hearing—and reminds us that to follow the Master has always involved the acceptance of such an end to this life. If we have held the opinion that we in the West are exonerated from the cross, his death screams otherwise. If we have assumed that the façade of American civility afforded an insulation from suffering, then perhaps this is the moment to incline our ear.
If our Gospel has felt at home in the West, then perhaps it has been domesticated. Moments like this can give a much-needed opportunity to hear the Master speaking in His wild and native world again. Out of love He still beckons the affluent to give everything to come, deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow His lead.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Bill asks a question, “What on earth do I do now that I’ve heard [Jesus’ words]?” Take a moment to ask yourself the same question.
Consider your own life, are there ways in which you are living according to a domesticated Gospel?
What might it look like to “incline our ear” to the Gospel of the Kingdom instead of sitting in comfort and stability?
Bill is married to Charis and they 7 children. Bill is one of the hosts of the Apocalyptic Gospel Podcast, a pastor, and disciple-maker living in Northern, CA.