If it's popular it's not Christian.
I take this to be Jesus' point when he says, "For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it." Authentic Christianity is a narrow and difficult path and few find it. Consequently, mass appeal and numerical volume, in church attendance, online followers, or book sales, is a quick index of if the gospel is truly being proclaimed. The larger the audience the less likely you'll have an encounter with Christ.
Here's an example of why this is so.
Consider audience capture. When people make an appearance on social media they quickly discover that their most thoughtful and critical content tends to elicit crickets. No one pays much attention. And then, one day, they write or record something polemical. Some hot take that fuels the outrage machine. They throw some red meat into the culture wars. And the people love it. The essay or podcast goes viral. Hits, downloads, shares, views, and new subscribers explode. This surge of interest delights the new influencer. But they quickly return to their regular programming, getting back into their thoughtful, critical content. The crickets return. Radio silence. No one cares. And so, they write another polemical "take down" piece or some culture war "hot take." And the hits and attention return. Viral liftoff is achieved.
And so, what happens over time? Well, this phenomenon is called "audience capture." Through the hits, shares, downloads, and followers the writer or podcaster starts to chase virality, pulling their content away from careful, thoughtful analysis toward ideological bomb throwing. The influencer isn't influencing the audience. The audience, through their attention, is influencing the influencer. The influencer starts to serve the interests, values, beliefs, prejudices, and biases of the audience. "Influence" becomes, in the end, culture war fan service.
We've all seen this happen. How an influencer gets a huge, huge following. But the audience is wholly in control. You know this because when it comes time for the influencer to call out the abuses, toxicity, lies, and outright evil of the audience they cannot summon the moral courage to turn on their own. Their entire platform would be decimated. And with the loss of that platform so goes their material livelihood, as paying subscribers summarily drop their subscriptions.
This is why having "a large following" is a sure sign that you're not going to encounter authentic Christian content. Because that "large following" is, rather, an ideological movement that has hijacked the influencer. "Large following" means culture war fan service. And if you doubt this, ask the influencer to call out the evil at work in their audience. They will not do so, for that would hurt their gig and their pocketbook.
Now compare all that to Jesus.
In John 6 Jesus is on the cusp of audience capture. He's just fed the multitude. And experiencing this the people hope to make Jesus king. But Jesus runs from the crowd:
When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This truly is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Therefore, when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
The crowds, however, follow Jesus across the sea. And there he tells these pious Jews that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Upon been punched in the theological face, the crowd recoils and stops following him:
Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?” Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this offend you?"
The answer is, yeah, this does offend them. Offense was the whole point. Not offense for its own sake, but the stumbling that inevitably occurs when you face the cross.
Here's the point.
Jesus refuses audience capture. Fan service is not his gig. So when the crowds get big he punches them in the face. He becomes offensive to the very people driving his popularity and acclaim. By contrast, most of us, as false-messiahs, ride the wave of popular enthusiasm. We give the people what they want. We grow the crowds larger and larger, reaping the material benefits in influence, power, and money.
Jesus, though, does the exact opposite. Jesus drives the crowds away.
Narrow is his way.
And only few find it.
