WWUUD?
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
“WWUUD?”
David R. Weissbard
First Universalist Society
Central Square NY
8/6/2016
A Story
It was a hundred and twenty years ago that the best-selling Christian novel of all times, In His Steps, was written by Charles Sheldon. It sold some 30 million copies and was translated into 15 languages. He was paid virtually nothing for it. 96 years later, Sheldon’s great grandson, Garrett W. Sheldon rewrote that story to make it more contemporary. Let me tell you the crux of the story in the modern form.
A minister is at home working on his sermon when the doorbell rings. He finds a young, pregnant, black woman with a small child at the door. She asks if he is the minister and he acknowledges that he is. She tells him that she is in need of someone to take care of her child because she has a new job as a waitress and she can’t take the child to work with her. He suggests she try the day care at his church, but she’d been there. The problem was she had no money to pay until she received her first check. He told her he didn’t know any babysitters, but he’d be happy to take her number in case someone occurred to him. She just turned and walked away.
The next day, the minister did his usual virtuoso performance in the pulpit – stimulating and entertaining. Just as he ended, a young woman came up the aisle, leading a small child. It was the woman who had visited the minister the day before. She turned and faced the congregation and told them she knew people aren’t supposed to speak out in church, but she was at the end of her rope. She told them her husband had disappeared when he found out she was pregnant again. She’d been taking computer classes, but had to drop them and take a job at a convenience store where the owner let her bring her daughter. She got sick and lost that job. She was evicted from her apartment and she and her daughter had been living in her car for two weeks. She wasn’t looking for charity. She had been searching for a way to get care for her daughter so she could work, but no one would help. She told them she heard their songs about “following Jesus.” She thought church people were supposed to act like Jesus. She just wanted someone to watch her daughter. She asked if that wasn’t what Jesus would do? “What would Jesus do?” she asked them. And then she collapsed. They took her to the hospital where first her baby, and then she died.
The next week, the minister mentioned the woman in his pastoral prayer, and then tried to preach, but he couldn’t get into the sermon. He put it aside and reminded the congregation of the text in Matthew in which Jesus said:
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat;
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink;
I was a stranger and you invited me in;
I needed clothes and you clothed me;
I was sick and you looked after me;
I was in prison and you came to visit me.
When the people asked when they had done this, he replied, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
The minister acknowledged that he had, in effect, turned Jesus away. He had failed to give shelter to the woman. He had not done what Jesus would have done. The minister proposed that members of the congregation take an oath that for the next twelve months, for every decision they had to make, they would stop and ask themselves the question the woman had asked them, “What would Jesus do?”
The novel goes on to tell the story of how that pledge impacted the lives of the members of that congregation, and the community, in the ensuing year.
The Sermon
[wwjd?]
I first encountered a WWJD t-shirt one evening at a play rehearsal just after Karen started teaching at a high school in a village outside Rockford. I learned the “WWJD?” movement began in 1996 with a church youth group in Holland, Michigan which had studied Charles Sheldon’s book In His Steps. They decided to pledge that when they faced decisions, they would ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” and someone made them wristbands with the letters WWJD to remind them. Within a couple of years millions of those armbands had been sold, and there were T-shirts, caps, jewelry, CD’s, and Sunday School curricula – WWJD had become an industry. There are 574,000 WWJD listings on the internet.
I am not of one mind about this.
On the one hand – how bad can it be for people who commonly respond to situations spontaneously without consideration for the consequences, often motivated by their hormones, to stop and hold their own potential actions up and measure them against an ethical standard?
[Jesus as role model]
If you are going to have a role model, Jesus of Nazareth is not a bad one. To ask not what a pop music star, or sports hero, or tv or movie icon — often people with dubious moralities — but instead “what would Jesus do?” -– that’s a sign of progress.
We know what Jesus stands for in our culture. His life was a demonstration of love in action. He urged people to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. He called for active concern for those who were weak or hungry or homeless, or in jail. He told people to give what they had to the needy, to love their neighbors. He preached a religion which was not just form, but real and active in people’s daily lives.
We know that the early Unitarian and Universalist ministers proclaimed the ethics of Jesus — they were only troubled by the incredible miracle stories that elevated him into a deity. They believed they were the true followers of Jesus. In this very church, the congregation affirmed its commitment to the ethics of Jesus. So, stopping at the point of a moral or ethical decision to ask “What would Jesus do?” seems at first glance like a good move, and I am absolutely certain that there are people who are living better lives today because they have stopped at crucial junctures in their lives to ask “What would Jesus do?”
I said, however, that I am not of one mind about this.
For one thing, how do we know what Jesus would do? Jesus lived in a very different world. While it is true that many human ethical issues remain constant (lying is still lying, deceit is still deceit, cheating is still cheating, exploitation is still exploitation) but the context of the modern world is confusing and one cannot simply move an itinerant preacher from 20 centuries ago into the modern world without some massaging of the message, some interpretation.
[Problems with Jesus]
If we were, as some suggest, to stick literally to the Gospel accounts of what Jesus is reported to have taught his disciples, we’d have some problems.
“What would Jesus do” if he was stimulated by the sight of a sexy woman? We are told in Matthew V:27 that he taught in such an event, “if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole being should be cast into hell.” There are people who have taken that literally – they have plucked out their eyes and often institutionalized or medicated for their own safety.
“What would Jesus do” if he were attracted to a woman who had been previously married? Matthew V: 32 “Whoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” Most of those who proclaim literal obedience to Jesus turn their heads and look the other away on that one.
“What would Jesus do” if someone with a lot of bad debts wanted to borrow money from him? “From he that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.” (Matthew V: 42)
“What would Jesus do” about healthy lifestyles? Matthew VI:25 quotes Jesus unequivocally: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.”
“What would Jesus do” if a father’s death interfered with a preaching assignment? Matthew VIII: 21gives us guidance: A disciple said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, follow me and let the dead bury their dead.”
“What would Jesus do” about family values? It’s right there in Matthew X:34 “Think not that I came to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword for I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
Friends, we would have a problem if we were to follow all of the teachings of Jesus whenever we had important decisions to make. This is not an exhaustive list of the problematic teachings ascribed to Jesus, but I think I’ve made my point. And I’m not making any of this up. As they say, “It’s in the book!”
[Picking and choosing]
Evangelicals attack those they label Liberals for picking and choosing the parts of Jesus they like and discarding the rest. The fact is that few Evangelicals urge their followers to pluck out eyes, to refrain from marrying divorcees, to ignore healthy lifestyles, or to let the dead bury the dead. They pick and choose the teachings they will take seriously, ignore some, or reinterpret them in ways they can accommodate in their belief system. When we get to that point, it is as if Jesus has become an inkblot whose teachings we interpret as we see fit, but that’s what virtually everyone does.
It is a kind of warm fuzzy thinking to say that we should always model ourselves after Jesus. It sounds good, but what does it really mean when you look beneath the surface?
And then there is the problem of the people who firmly believe that Jesus would tell them, or has told them, to bomb abortion clinics, or shoot the doctors, or beat up gays, or nuke the
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commies, or convert all the heathens.
I was really impressed several summers ago at Chautauqua by the evangelical preacher Tony Campolo. I believe Campolo is very serious about his religion. He was one of the ministers who was asked by Bill Clinton to counsel him when he was in the Monica Lewinski mess. Campolo, I am certain, asked himself, “What would Jesus do?” There’s not much doubt in my mind, nor was there in Campolo’s.
Remember, Jesus hung around with tax collectors and prostitutes. When he was accused of trafficking with lowlifes, he responded, “they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Campolo was determined to minister to the President whom he judged to be in need of ministry.
Immediately, many of his Evangelical colleagues turned on him. They canceled speaking engagements – they sent him threatening letters. Cal Thomas and Pat Robertson attacked him publicly. The college at which he taught and a missionary organization with which he volunteered experienced serious reductions in donations. Campolo was in trouble simply for being willing to do what he was certain Jesus would have done in that situation.
There is obviously a lot of room for interpretation as to what it is Jesus would do, and the result of that interpretation often is, not surprisingly, what the interpreter was inclined to do.
[World view]
One of the other problems with centering your life around what you think Jesus would do, which is to say, placing Jesus at the center of your life, is that it can lead to a very narrow world view. One who does that tends to forget that there are good people out there for whom Jesus is not the center, and for whom he need not be the center. Virtually all of the people in the stories in the modern version of the Sheldon novel, which is called What Would Jesus Do?, put a lot of their energy not only into helping people materially, but seeking to persuade them to take Jesus as their “Lord and Savior.” In many cases, they turn the workplace into an opportunity for proselytizing, without any realization that this is problematic. Their success is measured by the number of people they persuade to believe what they believe.
I am not suggesting that we ignore the positive dimensions of the ethics of Jesus. What I am saying is that the teachings of Jesus have some positive and some negative dimensions. Some scholars have suggested that part of the problem is that Jesus truly believed that the world as it was known would end soon and he was not preaching how to live for the long term. Whatever the reason, I do not believe that the teachings of Jesus provide an infallible guide for our lives.
It is true, I will concede, that it would be nice to have an infallible guide that would not need to be challenged or weighed or interpreted. Some of the positive things that Jesus preached require significant sacrifice, and such sacrifice is more likely in the case of blind obedience than with rational thought. In the long run, however, fanaticism is not preferable to personal responsibility for one’s actions.
[WWUUD?]
Our association’s magazine, The World, has carried ads for a Unitarian Universalist alternative to WWJD? offering bumper stickers asking WWUUD? “What would Unitarian Universalists Do?” That is, of course, an absurd question, because we all know that there is no conceivable situation in which all Unitarian Universalists would do the same thing. The closest we could come to agreement would be on the appointment of a committee to discuss the decision, but even that step would be passionately debated.
It is hard for many people to understand that in contrast to most religions, Unitarian Universalism has historically been more about a process than any set of answers. It is often said that we are more about the religious journey than any destination. While Unitarian Universalists differ in our solutions to the dilemmas presented by human life, we have discerned seven principles on which we generally agree help to guide us in arriving at responsible decisions. I am not for a moment suggesting that our seven principles are on the order of a mystical tool: they are the product of an extensive democratic process. They are likely to go out of fashion at some point, and are therefore subject to change. For the moment, I would however suggest that these principles are worthy of our consideration when facing moral choices.
[Principle 1]
The first, while simple, is among the most difficult to put into practice. “We affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” It is our aspiration to make all of our decisions guided by the belief that everyone — everyone, regardless of their status, their nationality, their intelligence, their race, their religion, their politics, their sexual preference, their gender, their quirks, their wealth, their disabilities — everyone has inherent worth and dignity. No one is to be dismissed as collateral damage: no one is to be “used” as a means to our benefit.
This is, of course, simply a modern expression of Jesus’ teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, the principle he illustrated by the story of the Good Samaritan, with which he challenged his listeners. Who could imagine a Samaritan being “Good.” It was a Samaritan, the lowliest of the low in the eyes of the people he was addressing, whom Jesus used to demonstrate what it meant to be a neighbor after the elite had passed by.
Those who talk about following the ethics of Jesus often have simply this teaching in mind. It calls our attention to a very different way of living than has been common in human history, but it is not exclusive to Jesus. It was taught by Hebrew prophets before him, by the Buddha, by Mohammed, by Confucius, by Lao Tse, and others.
This ranks clearly as a universal truth – not an exclusively Christian one, but one which has always been observed in the breech. It is hard to follow.
[Principle 2]
Our second Unitarian Universalist principle is, in a sense, an implementation of the first: a commitment to “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.” If we believe that everyone has inherent worth and dignity, then when it comes to relating to other people, we need to see to it that our actions are compassionate and that they promote justice and equity: that we are fair. Would it not be helpful, each time we face an ethical choice, to ask ourselves how the alternatives weigh on the scales of justice, equity and compassion? There is little evidence of that principle is commonly followed in personal or collective acts. Greed and self-satisfaction so often get in the way.
We had a very tight group in my elementary school – most of us had been together since kindergarten. We always worked co-operatively, helping one another. I still remember the shock when we went into fourth grade and the teacher, Miss Fitzgerald, mocked us for co-operating. It was childish, she insisted. We needed to grow up and stop being so immature. Our society’s values celebrate competition instead of compassion, privilege over equity, winning over justice.
[Principle 3]
Our third Unitarian Universalist principle speaks of “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth.” That is a fascinating pairing: acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. The implication is that spiritual growth is not simply an interior process, but that it involves other people.
We tend to think of “spiritual people” as being the most introverted, the most self-satisfied people. I would suggest that is a distortion of true spirituality. When we look historically at the great spiritual teachers in human history, virtually all of them were engaged in a remarkable acceptance of other people as they were — not as the common customs deemed they should be. It is the lesser spiritual guides who demand conformity, exclusivity, hostility toward those who see life differently, who have had different life experiences that led them to different conclusions. The Prophet Mohammed, we are told, declared:
“Beware! Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim minority, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I (Prophet Muhammad) will complain against the person on the Day of Judgment.”
When we make decisions, are they based strictly on materialistic considerations, or are they motivated also by a sense of spiritual connection to humankind and the universe which unites us?
[Principle 4]
The fourth Unitarian Universalist principle which I would suggest as a guide in our decision making is “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” [Interestingly, initially it was a “free and disciplined search” but it was changed to “responsible” when a feminist group in our movement objected to the connotation that “disciplined” had for them. As I said earlier, our principles are not immutable.]
It seems to me that this principle is the one that declares the problem with taking Jesus, or any other individual, or any fixed answers as the ultimate guide for our actions. Truth and meaning have never been finally established – not in Palestine 2000 years ago, not in Benares, not in Mecca, not in Rome, not in Salt Lake City. We cannot live fully by looking in a rear-view mirror, accepting only the truths that were known before. The search for truth and meaning is ongoing and it cannot be restricted except by responsibility – a concern for the outcomes. It must be an open search for what is most true.
[Principle 5]
The fifth principle also has a pairing: “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.” Here we have the tension between the individual and the group. The individual must, ultimately, rely on his or her inner compass. Holding slaves is not ok, even if the law permits it. Racial segregation was not ok, even when it was the law. It was not ok to steal the land and resources of Native Americans, even when they were commonly defined as non-human – and that theft goes on to this very day.
And yet, while the democratic process can lead to bad collective judgments, it is still far superior to any alternatives of we have conceived. All of us is generally wiser than any of us, but that does not relieve of us individual responsibility which is defined as conscience. There is a necessary tension in that pairing.
I believe I have shared with you before the story told by the great Theodore Parker, prophetic Unitarian minister of the 19th century. He remember clearly a day when he was four years old and was walking through the fields. He saw a spotted tortoise and started to raise the stick in his hand to hit it, the way he had seen other boys do to birds and animals. But Parked remembered a voice within that said to him, loud and clear, “It is wrong!” When he told his mother what had happened, she told him, “Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding this little voice.”
The problem with that story, the principle it proclaims, is the voice that some people hear is not the same as the one Parker heard; is not the same as the voices that some of us hear. The voice we hear may, in fact, be one that does not guide us toward love or justice. Some hear a voice that leads them to disrespect others, or other species, or our planet. Thus, the conflict between the “voice of conscience” and the insights yielded by “the democratic process” may provide a course correction, and then again, maybe not.
I think, for example of the young men who could not support the war in Vietnam produced by the democratic process, whose consciences led them to Canada.
There is no simple answer to the dilemma – we have to wrestle with the differences
[Principle 6]
The sixth Unitarian Universalist principle affirms “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” You will note that it does not say “a world government” but “a world community.” A community exists when there is a sense of the common interest of all. Anthropologists tell us that it has been common, through human history, for individual groups to refer to themselves as “the people” and all outsiders as something less. The true acceptance of the worth and dignity of all would be reflected by an awareness of all people as members of a single human community in which there would be peace, liberty, and justice for people of all nations. It has been calculated that since the founding of the Uniited States, there have only been 28 years in which we have not been at war with someone, and it isn’t that we have been attacked. We currently justify hostile actions toward other nations in terms of “American interests” rather than the safety of our nation. I find that to be in conflict with the principle of “world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
[Principle 7]
The seventh Unitarian Universalist principle is a contemporary one that has no resemblance to any teaching of Jesus of which I am aware: “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” We have a new level of awareness which is a product of modern science, although it was known also to what we refer to as primitive peoples. We call it systems theory. It is the realization that one cannot tinker with one thing without affecting everything else. Human “stewardship” of the earth used to be viewed as a license to exploit, permission to take what we needed or wanted. The decisions we make about the use of chemicals, about pesticides, about disposable products, about fossil fuels, about nuclear power: all of these have an impact on the future and on people around the world. We are only beginning to factor this reality into our decision-making. There are people who do not have a clue as to what this truly means – particularly if it disrupts the quarterly financial report. The Evangelical Climate Initiative argues:
that human-induced climate change will have severe consequences and impact the poor the hardest, and that God’s mandate to Adam to care for the Garden of Eden also applies to evangelicals today, and that it is therefore a moral obligation to work to mitigate climate impacts and support communities in adapting to change.
[What should you do?]
I have suggested that it is not sufficient, when we are faced with the human task of decision making, to rely on what we interpret the insights of one great teacher to be. We cannot pass the buck to Jesus, or to anyone else. To be responsible means that we need to judge our decisions based on the evidence at hand. There are principles that are helpful, and they can be discerned in the teachings of Jesus, and of the Buddha, and of Mohammed, and Lao Tse and Confucius, and the Hebrew prophets, and witches, and philosophers and other wise men and women throughout time.
Ultimately, we believe that asking only WWJD may be helpful, but not sufficient as we seek to live responsibly as citizens of the modern world. But the real key to living responsibly is taking seriously the need to pause and consider the impact of what we decide to do on us, on those we love, on our neighbors (broadly defined) and on the interdependent web of all existence. That, I believe, is what a generous application of our Unitarian Universalist principles leads to. What a difference it would make in our lives, and in the lives of our communities if we were to apply those seven principles.