Christians spend entirely too much time trying to make the Gospel less offensive than it is. We try to synthesize our faith with our culture so that it will be more palatable, but our Savior came declaring a Kingdom that makes demands on your lives. One of the fundamental Kingdom principles He proclaimed is that " the last will be first, and the first last ." Christians are so familiar with Jesus's many aphorisms that we forget just how earth-shaking they are, and, subsequently, we fail to live them out as consistently as we should. They're wise sayings, yes, but they are so much more than that. They are operational principles for life. When we read Jesus's teaching, especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), we see that this Kingdom He proclaims reverses roles. It flips the carnal world on it's head. The Kingdom of Heaven plays by different rules than this world. The world says that it's a dog-eat-dog world. Jesus says to...