Jesus' life should turn our world upside-down. His first observers, according to Luke, were routinely seized with amazement, both at the bending of physics--making the blind see and lame walk--and at the ridiculous things he did and taught. A careful look at the Jesus of the Gospels sketches a man completely out of touch with conventional thinking; a man radically devoted to living a shocking life for the sake of the broken and forgotten. In popular depictions of Jesus today he seems to be more concerned with upholding a conventional way of life than with overturning our understanding of...