What Would Jesus Do?
Last Sunday’s New Testament reading (08/12/2018) was from Ephesians 4. According to the Revised Common Lectionary, the reading was Ephesians 4:25-5:2, Rules for the New Life. At the church I attended and served as Lay Reader, I first read Ephesians 4:17-24, The Old Life and the New.
“. . . surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. . . . be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us . . .”
This passage reminded me of WWJD. “What would Jesus do?” became popular, particularly in the United States but elsewhere as well, in the 1990s and as a personal motto for adherents of Christianity who used the phrase as a reminder of their belief in a moral imperative to act in a manner that would demonstrate the love of Jesus through the actions of the adherents.
Note the word ACTIONS in the above description. I have thought of this often over the last few decades and have come to the conclusion that thinking about WWJD in a particular situation is not good enough. I began to think there should be an extension of this, something more proactive vs. just thinking about WWJD.
I now think of this saying as DWJWD, do what Jesus would do.
David Robert Lambert 