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/

Dealing With Decisions--Proverbs series

A farmer once hired a man to work for him. He told him his first task would be to paint the barn and said it should take him about three days to complete. But the hired man was finished in one day. The farmer set him to cutting wood, telling him it would require about 4 days. The hired man finished in a day and a half, to the farmer’s amazement. The next task was to sort out a large pile of potatoes. He was to arrange them into three piles: seed potatoes, food for the hogs, and potatoes that were good enough to sell. The farmer said it was a small job and shouldn’t take long at all. At the end of the day, however, the farmer came back and found the hired man had barely started. “What’s the matter here?” the farmer asked. The hired man replied, “I can work hard, but I can’t make decisions!”1

I imagine that many of us sometimes feel the same way. We feel as though we could glide through life rather smoothly if we just didn’t have to make so many decisions. There is a sense of responsibility that comes from making decisions that can be overwhelming to us. If someone would just tell us what to do, we could do it, and we could do it well.

But the truth is, we cannot escape the fact that we have to make decisions. We make millions of decisions in our lives, dealing with everything from what we will wear on a daily basis to who we will marry. Some of these decisions feel very insignificant, but some feel so important and life-changing that the fear of making a bad choice can become a crushing burden in our lives.

So how can we make good, God-honoring choices? How should we approach the process of decision making? These are the questions that we will deal with today in our study of the book of Proverbs. Let’s look together at three principles that Solomon shares with us about how to make good decisions.

I. Choose to Follow God’s Way of Living, Not Your Own

For every decision that we face in life, we can find guidance in God’s written Word—the Bible. This is true for every decision, without exception. In the Bible, God has explained the kind of life we should live, so as we make our decisions, we should choose to follow His way of living—not the way of living that might flow from the sinful desires that we have in our hearts.

Let’s look at a very familiar passage—Prov. 3:5–6. First of all, Prov. 3:5 says [READ 3:5]. One thing that we need to realize in life is that our understanding of the world has been influenced by many different things—such as the culture in which we live, the time period in which we live, and the part of the world in which we live. Our understanding of the world is influenced by many things, and they haven’t all been good influences!

Therefore, we need to trust in God and embrace His way of looking at our world. And as this verse says, we need to embrace His way whole-heartedly, because sometimes God’s way is really different from our way of looking at the world. For example, think about the command that God gives us to love our enemies. That command seems so backward to us. We’re tempted to think, “How in the world will it help me to love my enemy? I’ll just become a doormat, and he will just walk all over me!” But we can’t even imagine how God may work through our love, so when we’re faced with a choice like this in a relationship, we have to follow God’s way of living instead of our own.

Verse 6 then goes on to say, “In all your ways acknowledge him.” Now we could misunderstand this statement if we only took a casual glance at it. Sometimes we use the word “acknowledge” to speak of thanking someone after we have accomplished something, but this verse isn’t talking about something that we do after we have made a decision. In the American Heritage dictionary, the first definition for “acknowledge” is “to admit the existence, reality, or truth of.” The last option is the one that fits here. When we “acknowledge” God in this sense, we are admitting the truthfulness of His ways; we are agreeing that His way is true and correct.

So, in every path that we choose to follow, if we will admit that God’s path is true and right and then choose to follow that path, the last part of v. 6 says, “he will make straight your paths.” The picture behind this phrase is of someone walking in front of you to move things out of your way. That person is making your path smoother and easier.

A few years ago, President Bush visited the suburb of Kansas City that I was living in at the time, and I went out to the road to see his motorcade pass by. It was really a fascinating thing to watch. Before he came by, the police department went ahead of him and closed down every intersection that his motorcade would pass through. That way, there would be no other vehicles on the road, and he would have a smooth and steady ride all the way to his destination.

That’s the picture in v. 6—if we will trust God and follow His way of living, He will go ahead of us to make life smoother and steadier. This is quite a blessing, and we can enjoy it if we will choose to follow God’s path instead of our own.

Now oftentimes, we find ourselves facing choices where we say, “I would be happy to follow God’s path if I just knew what it was!” These times may come when we face choices about “big” life decisions, like what to do after high school or where we should live or whom we should marry. We often feel like the Bible doesn’t give us specific guidance for these choices, but in fact it does. It gives us specific guidance by helping us assess our motives and our goals.

In every choice that we make, we have certain motivations for making that choice, and we have certain goals that we hope to achieve by making that choice. The Bible has a lot to say about the motives and the goals that we should have in life, and we can get very specific guidance for our choices if we will assess our motives and our goals in light of Scripture.

The Bible is where we should look when we want to find God’s will for any decision. Too often we try to interpret how we feel or what our circumstances are or what the clouds look like on a certain day. But when you face a decision, God doesn’t expect you to try and interpret a shiver in your liver that supposedly tells you what His will is. In the Bible, God has given us all of the guidance that He feels we need, and all He expects of us is to make our choices within the parameters of biblical morality. If you will simply do that, you will be on the right path.

II. Seek and Accept Advice from Other People

After we have looked for God’s will in the Bible, we should seek and accept advice from other people before making our decisions. Follow with me as I read a few verses [READ 11:14, 12:15, 13:10, 15:22, 24:5–6]. All of these verses encourage us to get advice and counsel from other people. Remember who was making these statements—this was Solomon, the wisest man on the planet. 1 Kings 4 says “God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore” (4:29). People from all nations came to hear his wisdom (4:34).

So what does the wisest man on the planet say about making plans and decisions? He says it is wise to accept advice from other people. If there was ever a man who didn’t need advice from other people, it was Solomon, yet even he recognized its value and importance.

There are at least a couple of reasons that we need to be willing to accept advice from other people. First, we need to admit that we simply don’t know everything. Only God is omniscient, thus, consulting with other people can help us fill in the gaps in our knowledge so that we can make a better-informed decision.

Second, we have to remember the possibility that exists that we might deceive ourselves when we make our choices. Prov. 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” When we face a choice that has two or three or four options for us, it is very easy to deceive ourselves about why we prefer a certain option. Think if you were offered a better paying job than you have now. This job had better pay, better benefits—the whole package. A motivation of greed could come into play at that point, but it is very easy to dress up greed in nice clothes by saying things like, “I just want to provide more for my family.” Pride might also serve as a motivation, but we can dress that up with phrases like “career advancement” or “climbing the corporate ladder.”

But when we seek counsel from other people, they can help us see through our self-deception. They can bring in points-of-view that will help us think clearly again and make us take a cold, hard look at why we truly prefer a certain option.

III. Avoid Making Hasty Decisions

Follow with me as I read Prov. 19:2 [READ 19:2]. Your translation may read “a soul without knowledge” or “a person without knowledge.” The Hebrew term has a very broad range of meaning. It can refer to the entire person, or just the inner person—the soul—or even specifically to the desires of the soul. Regardless, this verse is warning us about making a decision before we have acquired adequate knowledge to make a wise decision.

Proverbs 21:5 carries a very similar warning [READ 21:5]. One definition of “diligence” is “attentive care.” A person who exercises attentive care in planning would be very thorough—he would take the time to consider every option and every possibility. The hasty person, however, is in too much of a hurry to give attentive care to planning and decision making and thus ends up in poverty.

Now, “haste” is not a word that we commonly use today. In one sense, it can simply speak of doing something quickly, which is not necessarily bad. But in the verses that we just read, “haste” clearly means making decisions too quickly, without taking the time to think them through. A quick decision is not necessarily bad if you already have enough good information to make a decision, but that’s a big “if.” That is also usually the problem—we simply assume that we have enough information without taking the time to make sure that we’re correct.

Sometimes we feel pressured to make quick decisions because we feel like we have to be “decisive.” That’s a popular term in leadership training today—being “decisive.” We’re told that a leader is decisive—“when you’re on the horns of a dilemma, you have to grab the horns and take charge. You have to be decisive! You can’t let people think that you don’t know what to do, so you have to make a decision!”

Well, again, a quick decision can be okay if you already have all the information you need, but as we have already seen, you better not simply assume that you already know what you need to know. Sometimes hasty decisions are motivated by pride. Perhaps we think we will look weak or ignorant if we seek out advice, so we just make whatever decision looks best and we run with it. Then sometimes we compound our problems by sticking with a bad decision that was made too quickly!

Giving careful thought to your decisions is not a sign of weakness—it is in fact a sign of wisdom. The simple act of making a quick decision means nothing in itself. It doesn’t mean that you are wise, confident, or a good leader. It could actually mean that you are rash, impulsive, impetuous, and downright foolish. So be careful in making your decisions—exercise attentive care in considering your options, and take the time to gather all the information that you need.

We all know the painful consequences that can come from making a bad decision, because we’ve all made bad decisions! We’ve failed to consult the Bible, or we’ve allowed sinful motivations to push us into a bad choice, or we’ve made a decision without really thinking through it. Our decisions are so very important, so it is vital that we take these lessons to heart today. Solomon has encouraged us to take advice from other people; we should start by taking his advice as he has laid it out in this book. Choose God’s way rather than your own; seek and accept advice from others; avoid making hasty decisions. If we will do these things, we can make choices that will keep us on the right path.


1From http://bible.org/illustration/can’t-make-decisions
Accessed May 13, 2011