Book Review: What Would Jesus Do

A Fair Trade Book (afaik)

Title: What Would Jesus Do

Author: Garrett W. Sheldon

Date: 1993

Publisher: Broadman & Holman

ISBN: 0-8054-6067-5

Length: 186 pages

Quote: “[M]y grandfather, Rev. Charles M. Sheldon...had written a religious book called In His Steps...this book had sold more copies than any other religious book except the Bible.”

So, not quite a hundred years later after the first publication of In His Steps, Garrett Sheldon chose to write a similar teaching story set in today’s world. It’s an interesting exercise to compare the two stories. Both are fiction; both were written to serve as sermons, fairly sharp-toned sermons at that, about the people who call Jesus their Lord and do not the things which He said.

In between the publication of the Sheldons’ books, there were the 1960s, when young people upset their elders by blathering about being “radicals,” and “Killer” Ron Halvorsen, the boxer turned preacher, preached a sermon called “God Needs Radicals.” He meant, of course, radical Christians—the kind who go through life asking themselves, not “What is the most profitable” or “What is the most popular” or “What looks like the most fun” thing to do, but “What would Jesus do?” I was listed as a member of a church that got Ron Halvorsen as a pastor, the year I was eighteen. The 1960s were over, the Cold War would soon be over, men were starting to forgive their close relatives’ opinions about the Vietnam War. The church was built to seat 2500 people at each of two regular services; three thousand packed in to hear Halvorsen preach that “God Needs Radicals.” I was eighteen; one of the parts that were still growing was the part of my brain that processed spirituality. I went to lunch with other kids and made fun of Halvorsen’s accent. Then I went home, and reflected, and decided that I wanted to be a radical Christian.

But a lot of people, even if they listened to Halvorsen’s sermon about radical Christianity, did not commit themselves to its practice. (Of those who did, many were baby Christians whose religion was still very much a matter of praying for miraculous recovery from their appalling pasts; how many of them matured into radical Christians, or into “neurotics,” or into backsliders, I don’t know.) So...What Would Jesus Do was yet another way of putting it.

I saw a lot of “W.W.J.D.” paraphernalia sold around the turn of the century. I remember most vividly seeing a lady’s “W.W.J.D.” key chain jingling as she asked why ever she would have wanted to tip the half-grown waiter in a city restaurant, where she’d treated me to lunch to celebrate winning a tidy little sum of money in a lawsuit. (She was old, and had come in from a small town. She didn't know.)

Well...God made us in different shapes and sizes, possibly so that we could see things from different angles, and notice different things. The nice thing about Sheldon’s presentation of “What Would Jesus Do?” as a story rather than merely a concept is to get past the blather about “Jesus was a young man, and I’m not young, not a man, or neither of those, and then Jesus was a rabbi, and I’m not even Jewish...” There’s no need for that. With a story Sheldon can tell us how a preacher behaves as he believes Jesus would behave if Jesus were a Protestant preacher in Chicago, and how a singer behaves as she believes Jesus would behave if He were a singer, and how a convenience store owner behaves as he believes Jesus would behave if He owned a chain of convenience stores.

He also takes us with a single delightful bound over all the twaddle about emotional feelings. The W.W.J.D. challenge is to do, and see what kind of emotional feelings come along as a result. Most of the time, as shown in the story, those feelings will include joy, which is a deeper experience than the manic mood that’s easily marketed as “having a good time.” Radical Christians smile and sing, quite a lot, but not in the manic way alcoholics grin and shriek over beer.

What’s not to love about this story? Well...if it had been a full-fledged novel, it might have included things that it doesn’t include. We see only a few of the most obvious possibilities for what “W.W.J.D.” means to only a few people. There are so many more. But personally I think this story is probably more useful as a quick teaching story than a novel would be, anyway.

Quick teaching stories tend to fall back on quick’n’easy stereotypes. Most of the people taking the “W.W.J.D.” challenge aren’t described in detail, but all the churchfolk who are described are described as White, with just one Spanish-surnamed employee (not a member of the church) in the lot. The young single mother whose death precipitates the challenge, and the people the churchfolk serve when they open their inner-city mission, are Black. There are some cities in the United States, especially small cities that have accepted those recent grants to construct low-income housing projects, where it’s true that all the middle-class to wealthy insiders are White and all the poor outsiders are Black, but this story is supposed to be set in Barack Obama’s sweet home Chicago. Ouch. Nothing a movie version couldn’t fix by casting Mrs. Paige and/or the Newtons and/or Pastor Maxwell as non-White, but. Still.

On the other hand, Sheldon is to be commended for presenting what happens to these stick-figure characters as very much like what happens to real people who take the challenge. There is that steady, solid connection with Cosmic Joy that’s always found in doing what a person believes to be the right thing, first of all. There’s the filling in of the gaps in families: radical Christians tend to attract surrogates for any missing members of their natural families. There’s the whole church getting to enjoy, vicariously, the tempestuous romance of the beautiful young singers. Also there’s the hostility from the people who didn’t dare to take the challenge. Then in a congregation of this size you knew somebody was due to die, and does. Radical Christians live in the same messed-up old world where everyone else lives, only with that connection to Cosmic Joy.

This book is recommended to any Christian who has not already read it. Non-Christians who can handle a lot of references to Christian hymns and scriptures (quoted in conversations) may want to read it too.

Although Garrett Sheldon doesn't seem to be active in cyberspace, as far as this web site can determine he is still alive, so What Would Jesus Do is a Fair Trade Book. When you send $5 per book and $5 per package to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, or that amount plus $1 per online payment to the Paypal address you get from salolianigodagewi, as shown at the very bottom of the screen, this web site will make an attempt to track down Sheldon (through his publisher) and send $1 to him or the charity of his choice. Three more books of this size will fit into one $5 package; if they're vintage or new books by living writers, we'll send 10% of their price to those authors or their charities, too.