What Would Jesus See? What Would Jesus Be? Rethinking the Jesus of History, The Imitation of Christ, and WWJD
The Beavin Lecture
Kentucky Wesleyan College 150th Anniversary September 27th, 2008
I am excited to be with you today as we celebrate together the 150th anniversary of Kentucky Wesleyan College. And I am proud to be a member of the class of 1958 that celebrated graduation 50 years ago during the 100th anniversary of this school.
My roots here are deep. My sister Margaret Baggett Britton and my brother-in-law Joseph Britton spent their entire teaching careers educating and inspiring Wesleyan students. And sharing this weekend with you in Owensboro is particularly gratifying because of my grandfather’s role in establishing this campus. In September of 1950 the telephone rang in the study of, John F. Baggett Sr. who was at that time pastor of Trinity Temple Methodist Church in Louisville. It was a surprise call from Bishop William T. Watkins assigning him to be the President of Kentucky Wesleyan College in Winchester Kentucky with the explicit charge of moving the college to a new campus in Owensboro. In the summer of 1951, under my grandfather’s leadership, the school moved to downtown Owensboro, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Moreover, I am especially honored today to deliver a lecture that is named for a Kentucky Wesleyan professor of Old Testament who significantly influenced the direction of my life as a student more than fifty years ago. I still can recall vividly several of Dr. Ed Beavin’s charismatic lectures during the semester I spent in his class on The Prophets of Israel. When I think of the prophet Amos, I remain convinced that Amos looked and sounded like Ed. I doubt that the Shepherd of Tekoa himself could have uttered the word “DOOM” with any more passion than did Ed Beavin. And because of Dr. Beavin, the words of Amos the prophet still resound in my being today.
Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way… (Amos: 2:6-7)
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream (Amos 5:21-24)
That class helped to shape my ministry over the years. The prophetic concern for the poor and afflicted played an important role in my decision to spend my early ministry in the inner city of Chicago, to be active in the civil rights movement, and, in the decision in my later ministry, to be an advocate for those afflicted by mental diseases.
I recently have completed a book about Jesus, which is titled Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus. I am indebted to many mentors and colleagues for the inspiration and scholarship that made that work possible. But it wasDr. Beavin’s class that “prepared the way” for me to understand the prophetic character of Jesus of Nazareth. And though my faith confesses that the significance of Jesus is far more than that of a prophet, I do not think I could begin to grasp what the transcendent significance of Jesus might mean for faith today, without first understanding the prophetic nature of Jesus’ mission. I hope you will see the relevance of this statement as I explore with you the subject of this presentation.
I would be remiss if I did not mention one more Wesleyan influence. Dr. Thomas Rogers, the New Testament professor during that era, was a kind soul, with a stimulating teaching style who was fond of saying that there are two ways in which one can come to the Bible. One is the way of the scholar and of critical examination. The other is the way of devotion. Both are important and necessary. My book about Jesus is an effort to be faithful to both of these modes of approaching Scripture. I have attempted to be informed by the best in scholarly study of the New Testament, and of historical Jesus studies in particular, and, at the same time, to approach the texts as a person of faith, whose own life is continually being called into question, nurtured, and guided by the Scriptures.
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I have chosen for the topic of today’s lecture, “What Would Jesus See? What Would Jesus Be? : Rethinking the Jesus of History, The Imitation of Christ, and WWJD?”
When I was a student here at Wesleyan, Charles Sensel and I had an ongoing tongue-in-cheek theological debate. My position was that if Jesus had been alive in the late 1950s he would have driven a 1948 Studebaker, a car that constantly left a cloud of blue smoke in its wake. That of course was the kind of car I drove. Charles’ position was that Jesus would have driven a 1951 club coupe De Soto with a gyromatic shift that was capable of driving all the way to Louisville and back. That was the kind of car Charles drove. I must confess that I still think I was theologically correct in that debate, as I believe that my light brown vehicle resembled a donkey more than the light green car that Charles drove.
Now I share this bit of nonsense in order to make the point that the question of the imitation of Jesus has taken many forms over the centuries and, notwithstanding the absurdity of my illustration, I believe it remains an important question for people of faith today.
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The idea of the imitation of God is deeply rooted in Biblical theology. As God created humankind in God’s image as recorded in Genesis 1:27, so the Jewish people were told through Moses in Leviticus19:2, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Jesus, who is portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew as the New Moses, is quoted in verse 5:48 as saying to his followers, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” while Luke, who saw Jesus as the Savior seeking to save the lost, quoted him in verse 6:36 as commanding, “Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful.”
In the post-resurrection Jesus movement, the idea of the imitation of God became synonymous with the imitation of Jesus as the Christ. Ephesians 5:1-2 expresses this quite clearly. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” And Paul exhorted the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians ll:1, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” In Philippians 2:5, Paul further stated, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” And in 1 Peter 2:21-22 we read, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
According to Biblical thought, then, human beings were created in God’s image with the intent that they imitate God in their attitudes and behaviors. And Jesus, as the Christ, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the Savior of humankind, became for the New Testament community the ultimate exemplar. The imitation of Jesus the Christ was synonymous with the imitation of God and the definition of faith filled living.
Now, it is important to remember that the imitation of God in Jesus the Christ, in the New Testament understanding, was not a life-style that was possible through human effort alone. Those who attempted to go it alone were destined to find themselves involved either in self-deception and hypocrisy, or in failure and despair. For in such cases the obligation to follow the example of Christ was simply another form of what Paul called the Law of sin and death. The authentic imitation of Christ was only possible for those who were undergoing spiritual transformation and who were being guided by and empowered by the Spirit.
When you read the early church Fathers you find occasional explicit references to the imitation of Jesus. St. John Chrysostom spoke, for example, of the process of “being saved through the imitation of Christ,” and Augustine of imitating the humility of the Son of God. But it was not until the late Middle Ages that the notion of the imitation of Christ emerged as a major theme.
By that time the imitation of Christ was largely identified with asceticism and the monastic life. In the early thirteenth century, following an epiphany, a Spirit filled man named Frances of Assisi decided that he should live as perfectly as possible, in the manner he understood Christ to have lived. If Christ wore no shoes, then Frances wore no shoes. If Christ wandered the countryside preaching the Kingdom of God, then Frances did the same. His literal reading of the gospels reinforced for him the belief that Jesus Christ lived an ascetic though loving existence, and Francis founded his monastic order based upon that understanding.
In the early 15th century the monk Thomas a’ Kempis wrote a book titled Imitation of Christ. While avoiding the literalism of St. Frances, a’ Kempis also believed that faithful living was to be realized in the self-renunciation characteristic of monastic piety. In fact, his classic, Imitation of Christ, was specifically intended as a guide for the monastic life. This book has continued through subsequent centuries to inspire many Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, although the monastic vision upon which it was based has greatly limited its relevance for ordinary people of faith.
It was for ordinary church members that Charles M. Sheldon in 1896 intended his novel about the “imitation” of Jesus titled In His Steps. You may remember that book. If not you will easily recognize the question it asked again and again: “What Would Jesus Do?” In contrast to the medieval view of the imitation of Christ as an ascetic life, Sheldon’s modern liberal vision focused on the identified social problems of the age. “What Jesus would do” was assumed, by Sheldon, to be self-evident in the face of such problems as the gulf between the rich few and the many poor, the threat to family and community life occasioned by the increasing numbers of neighborhood saloons, by the corruption of monopolies, and by the conditions under which workers were forced to labor. At the turn of the century, the book, and the challenge of its question, had become immediately and immensely popular. And though its reputation gradually waned during the decades following its first appearance, In His Steps remains ranked today among the most read books ever published.
About a hundred years after Sheldon’s novel was written, in the 1990’s, a time when my youngest son was active in a church youth group, “What Would Jesus Do?” was once again a well-recognized question. The letters “WWJD” now appeared on many types of church related paraphernalia, particularly in evangelical churches and among mainstream Protestant youth ministries. I recall that my son, as a latchkey student in Middle and High School, wore a mesh key holder around his neck with “WWJD” woven into it. Sheldon’s question, “What would Jesus do?” was alive and well a century after he had posed it.
But just as there were significant differences between the medieval monastic vision of the imitation of Christ as asceticism and Sheldon’s later social liberal vision of the imitation of Jesus, so there were remarkable differences between the 1890s question, “What would Jesus do?” and the same question as it presented itself in the 1990s. While Sheldon’s 1890s question was focused on corporate social morality, the 1990’s version for the most part, was defined as obedience to the personal moral teachings of Scripture, especially those dealing with human sexuality. The assumptions about who Jesus was, and what Jesus might do when faced with choices in the modern world, were characterized in those two eras by quite different visions. Yet both, in asking the “WWJD” question, made similar assumptions about the relationship between Jesus and the Christian life. I believe that at least some of these assumptions are suspect from the standpoint of New Testament theology, and that the question of “What would Jesus do?” may even be the wrong question to ask when we, as persons of faith, are faced with ethical dilemmas.
But, before I proceed to point out some of the theological inadequacies of basing Christian discipleship on the question of “What would Jesus do?”, let me acknowledge that Sheldon’s question has at times brought forth some very good fruit. I know that it influenced my decision one Sunday evening in 1965 while watching the national news. African Americans citizens in Alabama were mercilessly beaten that day, while attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on their way to Montgomery to protest voter discrimination. When I saw that atrocity, I knew that I would go to Selma, because I believed that was what Jesus would do.
And when, in the 1990s, my son was tempted to drink or use drugs, I am confident that the “What would Jesus do?” slogan helped to keep him straight. And because he had ADHD, had he not stayed straight, the consequences would likely have been disastrous.
Despite the indisputable contribution of Sheldon’s question to many Christian lives, the question “What would Jesus do?” has, I believe, serious inadequacies as a guide to Christian discipleship. Or, to put it another way, our post-modern world cries out for an articulation of the imitation of Christ that is more relevant to our times than “WWJD."
In the first place, there is a tendency for people to project their own wishes about who they would like Jesus to be upon his historical person. St. Francis and a’Kempis saw Jesus as a self-renouncing contemplative monk. Yet, my own scholarship suggests that John the Baptist was the real New Testament ascetic and that Jesus’ lifestyle was life affirming rather than life denying.
Sheldon, who had the characters in his book ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” tended to see in Jesus' life and teachings the utopian vision of nineteenth century American liberalism. And in the recent WWJD movement, there has been a tendency to assume that Jesus and conventional traditional morality are one and the same, rather than allowing Jesus to challenge conventional understandings and to instruct the consciences of his followers, as he did in his own generation.
This leads us to a second problem. To ask the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” tends to define the challenge of Christian living as one that is synonymous with moral living, whether social or personal in nature. In other words, the way the “WWJD?” question is worded focuses us on “doing.” As a consequence, we are driven toward an understanding of the Christian life as obedience to the Law, rather than as life in the Spirit. Our ethical actions then run the risk of being a form of self-justification. I may think, for example, that my life is justified before God and humankind because I believe I am doing what Jesus would do. This is particularly problematic if we ask the question “What would Jesus do?” and expect to find literal answers in the Scripture that then give us a false sense of certitude, and serve to remove ambiguity and personal responsibility from the decision making process.
This approach, as we suggested above, also runs the risk of assuming that the Christian life can be lived without first undergoing radical changes in perceptions, attitudes and relationships. In other words, it can be used as an impoverished substitute for authentic spiritual transformation and growth.
Thirdly, because Jesus lived in a time and culture that is alien to our own, it is also easy to misinterpret his words and deeds due to an inadequate understanding of their historical context. But even when we take measures to assure some degree of objectivity about who Jesus was, and what he said and did, and to place it all in proper cultural context, it remains all too easy to continue to misapply the “What would Jesus do?” question. That is because we lose sight of the fact that Jesus was unique. His calling and role in history were different from ours.
We too are unique. God has placed each of us in a different context and called us to differing roles in history. You are not Jesus and neither am I. The real question confronting us is not what Jesus would do if faced with our situation, but, “What is the will of God for us as we are in fact faced with it?”
This leads me to say, that if we are serious about living lives faithful to God as revealed in Jesus, a much more fruitful question than WWJD might be WWJS, or “What Would Jesus See?” Or, as I have stated the question in my book, Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus: His Revolutionary View of Reality and His Transcendent Significance for Faith, “What would it mean for us today to look at the realities of our own lives through the eyes of Jesus?” To put it still another way, we are not called in our time to imitate the actions of the historical Jesus, but to imitate Jesus in our relationship to reality. We are called in our own time and place to live in the reality of Jesus – to know and to be in Reality, as Jesus revealed it, instead of reality as the world conceives it.
Let us explore for a few moments what this might mean. In our post-modern world the very idea of “reality” has become a relative one. We know today, for example, that the view of the cosmos that Ptolemy expressed in the ancient world, that the earth is a sphere at the center of a universe of spheres moving in circles, is a very different picture than the one Einstein painted as a saddle shaped expanding universe.
Now the extraordinary thing about the times in which we live is not that Ptolemy was wrong and Einstein correct. Rather, it is that we now understand that one day another physicist will provide for us a model of the universe that accounts for things better than the present model, and after that model another, and so on. And while each of these models will serve for a time, we will never get to look at the universe through “God’s eyes” and see it as it really is.
The common sense of our time sees reality as a human construction. It is taken for granted that none of us can stand above the limits of human existence in order to verify any claimed knowledge of final reality, and that no individual or culture can prove one’s own view of reality superior to one held by someone else. And so, it is widely and popularly believed no one has the right to impose his or her own construct of reality on anyone else because one person’s reality is as good as another’s.
There is, however, another way of looking at the issue of reality. Contemporary psychiatry has a somewhat different view. It makes a distinction between reality and delusion. Not all versions of reality are of equal value. Some constructions of reality may be harmful to the self and others. Suppose, for example that a person tries to live in a world in which gravity does not exist. Is not such a person in store for a serious if not deadly correction should they step out the window of a tall building? It would be difficult to practice psychiatry if one did not take for granted that being oriented to life as it is, and to person, place and time as culturally defined by the larger society, is important for successful survival and social interactions in the world.
Now the New Testament provides us with yet another way of approaching the reality question. What it presents is not a natural cosmology or a human psychology, but a theology, an understanding of the ultimate meaning of human existence. In John’s Gospel, for example, “Reality” is the universal logos. Reality is not identified with a particular view of the cosmos, but with the universal Word that underlies all of existence. And this universal word is revealed in Jesus.
Reality is revealed, but it does not force itself on anyone. In that sense, the New Testament understanding is compatible with post-modern thought in its rejection of the imperialistic efforts of authoritarian groups to force ideologies and theologies on others. This non-coercive nature of universal and revealed Reality should not be misunderstood, however, to mean that one’s choice about that revelation is without consequence. As psychiatry understands the consequence of choosing between reality and illusion, so the New Testament understands one’s orientation to the reality revealed in Jesus is a matter of ultimate concern. To miss living in this reality is to miss life itself. Now if what is at stake is life itself, then it behooves us to understand just what it is that has been revealed in the historical life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
In order to address this in my book I chose not to look at Jesus as an historical object, the path of most who have engaged in the quest for the historical Jesus in our time, but to look with Jesus at the realities of God and Neighbor as illumined by scholarly exegesis of the oldest traditions within the Gospels. I did not attempt to write a biography of the historical Jesus, but to understand Jesus as a “self-in-relationship.” In doing so, it was possible, I believe, to avoid many of the pitfalls of the various quests for the historical Jesus and to speak with considerable confidence about Jesus’ view of reality. Let me share with you today, a few selected passages from my book that speak to this point.
“Jesus consciously defined the centerpiece of his own existence in terms of his relationship to the God of his experiential understanding. Yahweh, the God of his heritage, the Creator and Holy One, whose Name was sacred, was revealed to him as the intimate, personal, compassionate Abba, his spiritual Father, and, at the same time, as the spiritual Parent of all humankind. Jesus experienced himself as radically loved by Abba, possessed by Abba’s spirit, sustained by Abba’s daily care, and guided by Abba’s direction. This revelation and spiritual experience defined Jesus’ relationship to human existence. And this relationship with Abba shaped his understanding of reality as inclusive of world and spirit, and the reality of all neighbors and their needs.”
“To be oriented to reality in much contemporary thought, and in modern “realism” particularly, is to recognize the secular world, a world without “spirits,” as the only existing world. Jesus, on the other hand, approached this world with at least as much seriousness as the most dedicated modern “realist” would today. Yet his attitude toward this world was neither that of a cynic nor a pragmatist, for Jesus was a person of the Spirit who perceived the world not only through his physical senses, but also with his spiritual eyes. Reality, for Jesus, was both world and Spirit.”
“The goodness of God’s creation was transparent to Jesus as one who perceived in his vision of reality the activity of the Spirit in the midst of this world. Through the eyes of his own faith, grounded in his own most personal experience, Jesus could see signs of the Spirit all about him. When he saw flowers blooming in a field, or birds flying through the air, or a lifeless sparrow on the ground, he was struck with the awesome reality of God’s amazing care for each of His creatures. When it came to his attention that a poor widow had finally gotten justice from a corrupt judge who tired of her persistent efforts to get a favorable verdict, Jesus concluded that if this unjust judge showed mercy for all the wrong reasons, how much more can human beings count on their Spiritual Father, who alone is good, to show compassion toward those in need? When Jesus saw mustard weeds growing in a field of grain, or a woman making a loaf of bread, he also perceived the quiet miraculous activity of God’s Spirit already being in charge in the world and the assurance of God’s victory over evil.”
“For Jesus, the presence and power of the Spirit in this world was something he perceived and experienced every day. And because he lived and moved and had his being in that reality, he could speak with great clarity not only about the things of this world, but also about the things which cannot be seen with the eyes of the flesh. And because he always viewed the reality of this world as a world loved by Abba, whose care for the creatures of the earth was constantly transparent, everything in this world was a window to the world of the Spirit.”
“In Jesus’ view of reality, there was no clearer manifestation of spiritual transparency than when a person encountered a neighbor in need. Jesus did not see his neighbors as human objects, but as Abba’s children. Jesus’ relationships with the disabled, the destitute, and the despised disclosed not only a compassionate person, but one who viewed social outcasts and victims of discrimination and ridicule as being in reality spiritual beings, worthy of honor as children of God. Even Jesus’ enemies among the religious leaders and the governing authorities were to be loved and forgiven, for they too were Abba’s children.”
“Conventional social and religious beliefs often make a distinction between neighbors and non-neighbors. Non-neighbors may include foreigners, enemies, and unbelievers along with those who are social or religious outcasts. Most people agree that one is certainly to love one’s neighbor, but they also believe that it is perfectly acceptable not to love, or even to hate, one’s non-neighbors. Jesus would have no part in such distinctions.”
“For the most part, those who lived at the outer margins of society were ignored and invisible to those not personally affected by their suffering. But Jesus refused to divert his eyes in horror or disgust, or to pretend that suffering people do not exist in order to evade responsibility for them. He allowed his eyes to see the pain and misery of the world around him, even when others preferred to look away. He was willing to see a tormented psychotic, bruised and bleeding from self-injury among the tombs of a cemetery. He did not shut his ears to the desperate cries of blind and deaf beggars. Nor did he shrink back from touching an untouchable leper covered with putrid sores. He saw these suffering neighbors, and his heart filled with compassion and empathy. He reached out to them, and touched their diseased bodies. And, gifted healer that he was, he alleviated a great deal of suffering among the people of his land.”
It is important to understand that the compassion of Jesus was guided by what he perceived people truly needed. In the spirit of the prophets of Israel, Jesus understood that effectively addressing people’s relationship with God often required courage. “He knew love demanded that he call people’s lives into question, when they were missing the purposes for which they had been created. It meant that sometimes it was necessary to unveil the secrets of people’s hearts and to address their character defects.”
Perhaps these selections give you a feel for what I believe it means to live in the Reality of Jesus today. While there is a great deal that we do not know about the Jesus of history, we can, I believe, with the assistance of good scholarship, speak with confidence about Jesus’ relationship to God and humankind, and therefore about his view of Reality. And if we are also willing to hear the witness of those whose lives were first transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and who declared with the help of rich metaphors that the Jesus reality was the Ultimate Reality, then such faith becomes possible for us as well.
And so, if I ask today of my situation, of the problems and relationships before me, both personally and socially, “What would Jesus see?”, this question is not just another way of asking “What would Jesus do?” Rather, it is a reminder that I live in the reality of a world that is loved by God in its entirety, not in the illusion of a world without God, or one in which God only loves some, and not others.
It is a reminder, as well, that living in the reality of Jesus is a life lived in the Spirit, and not under the Law. As such the will of God cannot be reduced to a formula, or to a set of rules, because the circumstances of our ever-changing lives in the world will always confront us with ambiguities at every turn. It is an illusion to believe that we can reduce the contexts of our choices to the point that ambiguity can be avoided. Who of us has not faced ethical dilemmas posed by the conflict of competing demands from many different neighbors? All are loved children of Abba, but the limitations of existence force us to make difficult choices about when, where, and to whom we will respond. And by the very nature of saying “yes” to one claim on our lives we by necessity say “no” to others.
Neither those in the 1890s, who answered the call to reform the structures of society, nor those in the 199Os, who struggled to protect their young from the decadence of the world, were altogether wrong. Both WWJD groups were, in their own ways, sincerely seeking to do the will of God by imitating Jesus. But neither one adequately grasped the revolutionary distinction about faithful living that Jesus made in his debates with the Pharisees between trying to be a good person, and living in the reality of God’s love for the world.
Once we have grasped the implications of asking the question, “What would Jesus See?” we come to understand that the question of Christian living is not so much about doing, as it is about being. The question of “What would Jesus see?” leads us naturally to the question “What would Jesus be?” For Jesus, as we have seen, went about being the love of God in every situation. It is in that context that Jesus is the model for all Christian living. The authentic imitation of Christ only occurs when people live in Reality. To live in Reality is to see the world as loved by God, to see every neighbor, even one’s enemies, as loved by God, and it is to allow that love to flow through one’s being, to become that love, and tobe that love in all relationships and circumstances.
Of course, such a radical awareness and life-style cannot be experienced and sustained unless people are willing to become as little children, to be born anew, to open themselves up to spiritual change, and to allow the Spirit of God to flow through them. For the imitation of Jesus as the Christ is only made possible by the ongoing transforming power of God’s love, given and received.
That being said, as we are seeing reality as Jesus saw it, and as we are being the love of God in the world as he lived it, we also consider the choices for action before us, in the midst of life’s ambiguities. As we do so, we constantly ask the Spirit for guidance. Faithful doing is always prayerful doing. And as people of faith, living in the Reality of Jesus, we take the actions we have deemed necessary, while surrendering them to God who alone in His mercy will judge them.
