What would Jesus do when faced with many of today’s moral dilemmas?

23 min read

Using only the words of Jesus, I attempt to answer the ubiquitous question, "What would Jesus do?" But more appropriately the question should be, “What did Jesus say about [topic]”. What I learned shocked me.

I always admired my friend for this curious habit. As I got to know him better, indeed he always seemed to say and do the right thing, ostensibly as Jesus would. With challenges in my own life, I became curious to learn what this man who everyone in my circle of family and friends considered the greatest moral philosopher would say or do in a modern context. And so began my own journey of discovery to answer this question.

Spiritual Envy

For most of my life, I experienced what I can only describe as “spiritual envy” of the many Christian friends and family close to me who, like my friend, seemed to have a transcendent quality of happiness and peace of mind in all situations. I believed this was something I wanted as well. Triggered by a health crisis, although quite late in life, I decided to do something about this and so began a quest for knowledge to gain an understanding of how these unique individuals arrived at and maintained their faith. “Just read your Bible and pray for wisdom,” they advised me. “Let Jesus into your heart,” they said. “He wants a personal relationship with you.” I wanted to know more about this ancient character, Jesus of Nazareth who, arguably, had the greatest influence on mankind more than any single person in history and had transformed so many lives. Sure, I had spent my youth in Sunday school listening with fascination to Bible stories. I had even been baptized in the Protestant fashion to “repent of my sins and accept Jesus as my savior.” Yet I realized I could not quote anything that Jesus ever said except for the ubiquitous Golden Rule. And so so I began a journey that continues to this day.

Please understand it is not my goal to offend, but I am certain that some readers will be offended when they learn, as I did, that Jesus may not be all that they had been taught to believe. I believed only what I had heard in sermons and from my parents. Just like so many Christians I knew, I was intellectually lazy, willing to accept opinion and “made-up facts” instead of having to think for myself or face the inconvenient truth. But one must actually read and hear what Jesus had to say in order to get the true picture of this man. According to the Ponce Foundation, a Christian marketing research group (and I must emphasize Christian), “Of over 2 billion Christians in the world, less than 30% will ever read through the entire Bible.” This is consistent with findings from other religion researchers such as Gallup, Pew Research, Lifeway Research and the Barna Group. For a book claimed by billions to inform their way of life and politics, this statistic is shocking. Yes, I was one of the 70% who had never really read the scriptures.

The Four Persons Named Jesus

Scouring the Bible’s New Testament where Jesus first appears on the scene, I discovered there are at least four personas of Jesus. In the four so-named Gospels (gospel is an anglo-saxon word meaning “good news”), Matthew and Mark describe one Jesus, Luke another and John, still another. The epistles of Paul of Tarsus, whose letters to Christian churches around Asia Minor comprise the bulk of the New Testament, describe yet another Jesus. I have since discounted Paul’s Jesus when I learned that Paul never actually met Jesus (except in dreams) and never walked with Jesus as did the original twelve apostles appointed by Jesus and knew virtually nothing about the man or his life. Paul, having spent the better part of Jesus’ ministry persecuting followers of Jesus, was complicit in at least one death: the stoning of the disciple Stephen. Evidently, after his rather sudden and mysterious conversion while on one of his persecution trips, Paul went on to create his own moral philosophy. This was not based on first-hand knowledge of Jesus’ words, but on revelation. This resulted in conflicts over the teachings of Jesus and sometimes acrimonious disagreement with those who Jesus appointed to carry on his teachings.

Therefore, ignoring Paul’s imaginings and focusing solely on the four Gospels, I searched the texts for insights into the real Jesus, the man-god worshiped and beloved by so many. And what better way than to extrapolate the actual words attributed to the greatest moral teacher that ever lived and, not incidentally, the savior of all mankind?

First, I wanted to know Jesus the teacher. What was his world view? What religion did he practice? Did he belong to a particular sect? If so, how did that influence his teaching?

So I recorded all words found, especially those in quotes which seemed to be attributed to Jesus and listed them one after the other on the page. This took some time, but doing so was well worth the effort. That way I could go back and focus on Jesus’ philosophy without all the peripheral noise.

I then organized this collection by topic to determine how Jesus handled difficult topics and how he reacted in certain situations. In the process I had collected real answers to that ubiquitous question my friend and millions of other Christians ask themselves when faced with a difficult situation or morality question: What would Jesus do?

Jesus the Jew

It is well established that Jesus was a practicing Jew, knowledgeable in the Law of Moses. It is my understanding that there existed at least four active sects within Judaism during the time of Jesus.

First, there were the Zealots, a seditious group planning to overthrow the occupying Roman government in Galilee. One of Jesus’ first disciples was labeled Simon the Zealot.

Two other sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, are mentioned frequently in the Gospels as Jesus would go up against these groups from time to time. However, in the view of the author of the gospel of Mark, Jesus’ main adversaries in Galilee were the scribes (lowercase), those educated men who had knowledge of the Law and could draft legal documents, although they were not a sect per se as many scribes were Pharisees.

According to the author of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ greatest opposition came not from the scribes but from the Pharisees who, like the scribes, had thorough knowledge of Jewish law. Pharisees were members of a party that believed in resurrection and in following legal traditions that were derived from the “traditions of the fathers”, although I am not certain what that means.

The third group, the Sadducees, were a socio-religious group generally consisting of high priests, wealthy aristocracy, and merchants. Due to self-interests, they tried to maintain good relations with their Roman occupiers, and were considered the more conservative sect within Judaism.

But there was a fourth group, the Essenes, from which Jesus may have derived his philosophy and traditions. Although the Essenes were not mentioned by name in the New Testament, we know of them through the Jewish historian, Josephus, as well as from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Essenes were still very much Jewish, but like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they had their own unique interpretation of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. When I examined the philosophy and belief system of the Essenes and compared it to the words and deeds of Jesus, there are, not coincidentally, many parallels:

The Essenes were apocalyptic. They believed the end times were near, as did Jesus.
The Essenes were messianic, believing there would be an “anointed one” who would be direct blood descendant of King David, sent by Yahweh as a military leader to deliver the Jews (to the exclusion of the Gentiles) from Roman occupation. At times Jesus spoke as if he was this messiah.
The Essenes believed there would be either a new or revised covenant with God. From time to time Jesus would deliver ad hoc revisions of the commandments which irritated, if not offended, the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees.
The Essenes practiced a water purification ritual. Jesus appeared to be a follower of John (the baptizer), more than likely an Essene prophet himself, and so was baptized by John in keeping with this tradition. As well, this ritual of water purification (baptism) was adopted by first century and later Christians, although through the millennia the meaning of the practice has changed depending on interpretations of the multitude of Christian denominations.
The Essenes were anti-Temple. As well, Jesus was disgusted by the Jewish Temple crowd, having been transformed into a corrupt marketplace by members of the the other Jewish sects.
The Essenes practiced communal living, very much the hippie-socialists of the day. Jesus’ message of denying wealth and glorifying poverty was very much in the Essene tradition. We know that he was unemployed during the three short years of his ministry, walking about from place to place, depending on the kindness of others for his basic needs food and shelter.
Some Essenes practiced celibacy, disdaining marriage and children. This made sense from their apocalyptic point of view. Jesus appeared to be in agreement with this practice as we will learn by examining his words.
The Essenes believed in immortality and divine punishment for sin, as did Jesus.

In the chapters to follow, I will not bore you with a list of every single quote attributed to Jesus. I say this because some of his quotes have no particular significance regarding any topic or philosophy. What remained was a distillation of what Jesus allegedly said or did when questioned by his disciples or challenged by members of other sects, as well as when he found himself in difficult situations with the authorities.

During my indoctrination into Christianity, having been told of the perfect divinity of this man, my expectations of perfection and profundity had been set quite high. Were not the words and teachings of Jesus to be so profound, so relevant for all time and all situations that they could not possibly have been uttered by a mere mortal? After all, no single being has had more influence on our world over the last two millennia than this itinerant iron-age Jewish preacher who emerged from one of the most backward regions of the world.

Jesus as God

So what makes Jesus so special, so different from any man that ever lived? This thirty-something Nazarene Jew, son of a lowly carpenter, is considered by billions to be a divine, supernatural being—literally God in human form. He is one third of the Holy Trinity, the remaining third being the Holy Spirit. At least that is what I was taught to believe.

I was told to believe that Jesus was born of a Jewish teenage virgin, impregnated without the benefit of sexual intercourse, at least the human kind.

Being divine, Jesus could perform miracles, such as changing the molecular structure of water into a complex mixture of acids, tannins, alcohols, phenolic compounds, to that of wine.

I was taught Jesus could replace the defective rods and cones and even remove cataracts in the eyes a blind man simply by spitting on dirt and the applying the resulting “mud” to the unfortunate man’s eyelids.

As well, I was taught that Jesus, using only his words, could cause a rotting corpse to resuscitate, and command it to stand up and walk from its tomb.

And, then there’s the most amazing feat of all. Although he was ultimately tortured and executed, having bled and died as any of us mortals would, Jesus (as God in human form as Trinitarians believe) caused himself to awaken from death three days later, regenerate his deteriorating organs (well, except for the wounds to his hands, feet and abdomen), then rise up from his grave. He then walked about the countryside appearing in two places at once, and even passed through walls! Later, in front of hundreds of onlookers, he would levitate thousands of feet above their heads and disappear into the clouds (apparently this is where Heaven existed at the time). Certainly, such an incredible supernatural being would have the most breathtaking, most life-changing words ever spoken!?

Jesus the Moral Philosopher

So this is a good point to dive right in to the ultimate source, the Christian Bible, the so-called Word of God, and determine what Jesus had to say on a variety of important topics, especially those relevant to us living in the modern world. However, I have made a few assumptions: first, that all the purported eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said and did in the Gospels are both true and accurate, therefore ignoring the vast interpretive and conflicting works of noted Biblical scholars and historians of the past two millennia. Second, I intentionally discounted results of The Jesus Seminar, a decades-long, exhaustive, ecumenical research project conducted by scholars and linguists—all Christian believers of one flavor or another—to determine which statements can be attributed to Jesus and which, due to literary inconsistencies or historical discrepancies, cannot.

By doing so, my first surprise was the Jesus’ philosophical inconsistency. The man would say or do one thing and then appear to be contradicting his very own words and actions later. In other words, he didn’t always practice what he preached. And when in a bad mood, the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” could be quite impatient, show intolerance, and be even downright rude. Quite unseemly for the man whom I had always believed was the supreme example of perfection. I was most disappointed to realize that much of what Jesus had to say was…er…dare I say “vanilla”? And, for the most part, unoriginal. Take, for example, the much touted Golden Rule often attributed to Jesus. Just google “Jesus best quotes” or similar and his words “do unto others…” will often top the list. Turns out this egalitarian message to ‘treat others as you would want to be treated’ had existed in many societies around the globe long before Jesus, the first recorded instance appearing in Hindu texts written some 2000 years before Jesus even appeared on the scene.

So how do we answer the simple question, “What would Jesus do?” Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. However, it’s not a problem! I learned that if you do not like his answer in one gospel, just grab a concordance and you may find an answer more agreeable to your personal position in another gospel.

To add to my frustration, Jesus rarely gave direct answers to simple questions from his disciples. He often spoke in parables to further complicate their (and my) understanding of what he meant. Parables were stories that employed metaphorical illustrations or hypothetical situations that were intended to help his disciples’ understanding of his position on a variety of topics, but often left them (and future generations) confused. When his disciples didn’t get the message, Jesus would show his frustration and toss a few insults their way. Somehow Jesus believed that parables were the only way the simple-minded could understand his philosophies. Unfortunately, such indirect responses left much to the interpretation of Church leaders for millennia to come and, in my opinion, could be the major reason for Christian discord and Church splits, resulting in literally tens of thousands of versions of Christianity.

For this series, I did not examine every topic upon which Jesus may have commented. Still, there will be plenty to raise your eyebrows or scratch your head. If you are at all like me, you may find Jesus’ preachments somewhat underwhelming. As for my once-upon-a-time longing to establish a personal relationship with Jesus…spoiler alert: I now prefer my relationship with reality.

In the research to follow, if you suspect I am inventing any of Jesus’ words, whenever possible I have included the book, chapter and verse for your reference. Pick your favorite Bible translation—for the most part it shouldn’t matter—although some later translations may have chosen to soften or creatively spin some of the more difficult words and troublesome actions of this enigmatic man. So here is Jesus of Nazareth, in his own words. Enjoy.

Continue to Part 1 - What did Jesus say about war and peace?

WWJD: Series Introduction

Spiritual Envy

The Four Persons Named Jesus

Jesus the Jew

Jesus as God

Jesus the Moral Philosopher