Is "What Would Jesus Do?" The Best Question for Decision Making?

In 1896, Charles Sheldon, the minister of the Congregational Church in Topeka, Kansas, wrote a novel entitled, “In His Steps.” That novel popularized the use of the question “What would Jesus do?” as a tool for making moral decisions. This question stuck around among Christians after that time and then enjoyed a big resurgence in the 1990’s through church youth groups. It has remained very popular ever since.

As surprising as this may sound, though, I think the popularity of this question overshadows an even better question that we could ask when facing moral dilemmas. Now, don’t me wrong—“What would Jesus do?” is certainly a fine question. It’s a far better question than “What would feel the best?” or “What would offer the path of least resistance?” Nevertheless, I think the question suffers from some drawbacks—some that stem from our response to the question, and at least one that stems from the question itself. What are these drawbacks?

1. We often assume we already know Jesus well enough to answer the question

Many people would say they’ve got a good grasp of what Jesus was all about—at least in His personal interactions, anyway. “He was all about being nice and polite, right? Inviting children to sit on his lap and what not.” If we already know Jesus so well, there doesn’t seem to be any need to take another, closer look at His example before we decide what He would do. But this is precisely where we take a massive wrong turn.

In this day, when only 32% of regular churchgoers read the Bible everyday¹, we’d better pause and think before we claim to know Jesus well. Have you ever read one of the Gospels all the way through? How about all four of them? They don’t all contain the same stories, so it’s important to read them all. If you haven’t done so yet, are you sure you know Jesus well enough to state what He would do?

If we try to decide what Jesus would do without cracking open the Bible and thinking long and hard about the question, the decision we reach could be far off the mark.

2. We over-emphasize some of Jesus’ actions and teachings and neglect others

Let’s face it—Jesus was a complex individual. We would not have predicted that all of His sayings or all of His actions would have come from the same person. The same Jesus who said He was gentle and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29) also said that He came to cast fire on the earth and wished it was already kindled (Luke 12:49). The same Jesus who took children in His arms to bless them (Mark 10:13-16) also chased other people with a whip because they desecrated a holy place (John 2:13-17).

It takes great care and deliberate effort not to create a one-sided caricature of Jesus, but many times that’s exactly what we end up with in our minds. We tend to highlight the sayings and actions that we’re comfortable with and all but ignore the ones that make us squirm. But if we don’t consider the full range of Jesus’ words and deeds when we try to follow His example, how confident can we be in our declarations about what He would do?

3. The question runs the risk of downplaying the uniqueness of Christ

When we ask “What would Jesus do?” there seems to be an assumption that we can think along exactly the same lines as Jesus; that we can weigh exactly the same considerations that He would. But for all the ways in which Jesus was similar to us, He was still different from us in some highly important ways. On some occasions, He took the actions that He did because He knew the inner thoughts of others (think of the healing of the paralytic in Matthew 9) or because He knew the future (think of Christ’s delay in traveling to Bethany before raising Lazarus in John 11). And I hardly need to mention Christ’s ability to do miracles!

Those differences present some difficult hurdles to jump in our efforts to decide what Jesus would do in our present-day situations. I don’t know the inner thoughts of others; I don’t know the future. How do I know that Jesus wouldn’t have made a very different decision than me based on His knowledge of information that isn’t available to me?

A better question

“What would Jesus do?” can be a fine question IF the preceding drawbacks are kept in mind. Obviously, we want to imitate our Lord as much as we can! But I think there’s an even better question that deserves more of our attention. It is not “What would Jesus do?” but rather “What did Jesus command?” Or even better yet, “What did Jesus and His hand-picked representatives command?” We’ve got to bring the writings of the Apostles into our decisions; after all, they are the ones whom Jesus commissioned to make disciples and “teach them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt 28:20).” He promised that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth (John 16:13), so we have it from Jesus that we better listen to what the Apostles had to say.

Commands offer us much greater clarity than an example ever could. The example from a person’s actions can be difficult to apply from one situation to another—even when we know that all of a person’s actions were morally perfect, as in the case of Jesus. But commands, by their very nature as directives, point us very clearly in the right direction. Yes, we will still have to sort through some questions about the precise steps that we should take, but commands make the general outline of the path very clear.

So as you make your decisions, I would encourage you to give your primary focus to the commands of Jesus rather than His actions. Actions can be helpful illustrations of a command, and thus we can and should learn from them, but commands offer greater clarity. So lock in on the commands of Christ and His Apostles!

References:

1. https://factsandtrends.net/2019/07/02/how-many-protestant-churchgoers-actually-read-the-bible-regularly/