The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey
FINALLY completed this book... I actually started reading it several years ago but put it down for so long that when I got back to it, I started at the beginning again.
This is an excellent book. Phillip Yancey is a gifted writer who peers into his own soul with trusting honesty and spiritual insight. I've read a good deal of scripture and can attest to both his knowledge and understanding of the Bible passages he cites.
But he doesn't just use scripture to look at Jesus - he includes secular writings as well as contemporary films to compare and contrast our assumptions about the Lord with actual facts.
A simple example is what we think Jesus physically looked like, compared with the fact that there is no known written description of him. Despite the lack of evidence we have many portraits of a man so easily recognized that even people who don't believe in him can point to his picture and know who he is.
So what did Yancey have to say about this Jesus?
He admitted there were many things about Jesus that could not be understood... an unbending commitment to righteousness along with unhesitanting acceptance of sinners. I liked that Yancey examined this discrepancy without attempting to resolve it using faulty logic or shallow reasoning. To me, a man who admits he doesn't understand something is so much more trustworthy than one who claims he knows what is obviously unknown.
Last, I was rocked by the realization that the apostles, the ones that Jesus befriended, tutored, and trusted were so incredibly unreliable and unworthy. I saw myself in this group (unreliable and unworthy) and took great hope in the knowledge that Jesus could handle that.