the friend of sinners. Jesus is the friend of people who are willing to admit that they have problems. If we understand that we have issues, if we recognize that we have stuff we cannot conquer, then Jesus is near to us. You don’t have to be good to be Jesus’s friend. You just have to be honest. For many of us, our default view of God is that he is an angry, vengeful deity who is just looking for an excuse to punish us. We would do better to picture him like Jesus—because