Stan from Bird of the Air explains.

Excerpt:

Here, test yourself. Is your view of Jesus “meek and mild”, perhaps a “laughing Jesus”, a quiet, soft-spoken guy? Is He the compassionate one who never said a harsh word? Well, then, I suggest that you are correcting Jesus, because that’s not the biblical image. Consider the following.

Jesus wasn’t some “nice guy” when He instructed His disciples on their traveling mission:

Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me” (Luke 10:10-16).

Oh, my, that’s pretty harsh language. Even more so when you understand that the biblical “woe” isn’t our standard “woe is me”, but a curse pronounced against a sinful person or group. I mean, seriously, how is a Jew of His day supposed to take it when He says “it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom”? That can’t be considered “warm” or “sensitive”. It is certainly not “inclusive”. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to be the lover of all sinners? What’s all this?

His diatribe in Matthew 23 is much worse. At least seven times He describes the local religious rulers as “hypocrites”. He has “friendly” (not very) descriptions like “white-washed tombs”, “vipers”, and “blind fools”. He accuses them of making converts and then “you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” Oh, it’s big, and its an entire chapter. Seriously, Jesus, describing them as “a child of hell”? That’s not friendly at all. It doesn’t coincide with our “nice guy” image of Jesus. The image of Christ in the Temple with whip in hand doesn’t really fit well with the soft-spoken, laughing Jesus we like so well. His repeated references to people who will “be thrown into the fire” (Matt 7:19; 13:40; 18:8-9; 25:41; John 15:6) don’t come across as humble or kind. Jesus, in fact, has the most definitive descriptions of eternal judgment in terms of “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”.

We have a lot of compassionate readers who are always disapproving of me for being mean. Well… how do you like those verses? Jesus isn’t always Mr. Nice Guy, which is fine because I really like mean Jesus. Matthew 10:34-38 is one of my favorite passages – I like to bug my mother with it. She’s not a Christian, so it’s pretty fun.