Thursday, July 4, 2024
I recently saw one of those W.W.J.D? bracelets. In case you don’t know what that stands for, it’s “What would Jesus do?”
By all accounts, it seems Jesus was unpredictable, radical even. Everything he said and did seemed counterintuitive, unconventional, and never in line with the common sense of the day. First off, he equated himself with God, and that led to his death. If you equate yourself with God nowadays, you likely wouldn’t be killed, but you’d be ostracized and considered a whacko.
He told people to love one another and to forgive those who do harm. He was ridiculed for hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. He was a single man and he lived in the company of 12 other single men. Nobody thinks that’s weird, but if that happened today, we’d raise an eyebrow. Jesus was woke.
Who knows what Jesus would do? He was a free spirit, a renegade, and a teacher whose lessons were unlike anything that anyone said before, at least in the Middle East. Most of us don’t even know what we would cook for dinner, much less what a man who lived 2000 years ago would do in today’s modern predicaments. It’s a useless thought – “What would Jesus do?”
It’s best to pay attention to what we are doing now. W.A.I.D? – What am I doing? What you “would” do is speculation, and your future self is unknowable. What would anybody do? Pay attention to what you’re doing right now. Speculating about a historical figure’s actions in today’s world or speculating about your future actions or those of others doesn’t seem helpful. W.A.I.D? What am I doing? Awareness of your present actions – that’s more useful than trying to imagine what someone else would do.