What would Jesus do?

The phrase "What would Jesus do?" ( often abbreviated WWJD) became popular in the United States in the mid-1990s, becoming the personal motto of thousands of Christians, who used the phrase as a reminder that, under many interpretations of the Bible, Jesus is the primary model for morality. The purpose of the phrase is to remind people to act in a manner of which Jesus would approve. Though variations of this phrase have been used by Christians for centuries as a form of imitatio dei, the imitation of God, it gained much greater currency following Charles Sheldon's 1896 book, In His Steps. In this popular novel (it had been translated into 21 languages by 1935), Rev. Hennry Maxwell encounters a homeless man who challenges him to take seriously the imitation of Christ. The homeless man has difficulty understanding why, in his view, so many Christians ignore the poor:

"What is meant by following Jesus[?] What do you mean when you sing 'I'll go with Him, with Him, all the way?' Do you mean that you are suffering and denying yourselves and trying to save lost, suffering humanity just as I understand Jesus did? What do you mean by it? I see the ragged edge of things a good deal. I understand there are more than five hundred men in this city in my case [i.e. unemployed and homeless]. Most of them have families. My wife died four months ago. I'm glad she is out of trouble. My little girl is staying with a printer's family until I find a job. Somehow I get puzzled when I see so many Christians living in luxury and singing 'Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee,' and remember how my wife died in a tenement in New York City, gasping for air and asking God to take the little girl too. Of course I don't expect you people can prevent every one from dying of starvation, lack of proper nourishment and tenement air, but what does following Jesus mean? I understand that Christian people own a good many of the tenements. A member of a church was the owner of the one where my wife died, and I have wondered if following Jesus all the way was true in his case. I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night,

'All for Jesus, all for Jesus,

All my being's ransomed powers,

All my thoughts, and all my doings,

All my days, and all my hours.'

"and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it. It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin."

This leads to many of the novel's characters asking, "What would Jesus do?" when faced with decisions of some importance. This has the effect of making the characters embrace more seriously Christianity and to focus on what they see as that religion's core -- the life of Christ.

In the United States in the 1990s, some Christians drew upon Sheldon's novel, embracing the phrase and creating bracelets with the abbreviation W.W.J.D. These bracelets became quite popular in certain circles (they were generally worn by young people) and were even worn, in rather limited numbers, as a fashion statement by people who did not necessarily seek to do "what Jesus would do."

The initialism WWJD is sometimes also used by Christians to mean "Walk with Jesus daily", and some evangelicals have asked "What would Jesus drive?" in an advertising campaign.

Accessories

Bracelets with WWJD are popular with some Christian teens. Other paraphernalia with WWJD inscribed are available as well (mugs, rings, bumper stickers, bookmarks, key rings, etc). Some commonly sold versions of these items have been discovered to have been made with toxic substances such as lead. [1] (http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/article_6_15_04_Lead_Levels.html)

Parodies

Sometimes the phrase is used sarcastically, in variations of the form What would [person] do?, or to represent phrases from What would Jesus drive? to We want Jack Daniel's in order to criticise or satirise the phrase, its common usage, or certain strains of Christianity.

A notable example of this is the replacement of Jesus with US figure skater Brian Boitano as a role model for all situations in the parodistic song "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" which was written for the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.

In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson wears a bracelet that reads "WWJD". Lisa looks at it and says, "Good point, what would Jesus do?" At that point, Homer complains "It's Jesus? I thought it was Geppetto!"

A Family Guy episode, a sequel to The Passion of the Christ, shows Jesus driving a car with "WWID" as the number plate.

Some critics of George W. Bush's ties to evangelical Christians parody the phrase with "Who [sic] Would Jesus Bomb?" David Rovics also wrote a song (http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=111310&content=lyrics&SongID=1125356) with the same title in response to a run-in with "some rightwing evangelical types" at a supermarket in Houston.

External links

• In His Steps (http://www.ssnet.org/bsc/ihs/ihs.html)
• Cave, Damien, "What would Jesus do -- about copyright (http://archive.salon.com/business/feature/2000/10/25/wwjd/print.html)?". (Christian merchandise intellectual property violations.)
• Snider, Brian, "What would Jesus do (http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/wwjd.htm)?".
• What would Jesus drive? (http://www.highrock.com/personal/WWJD/)