WWJD is less helpful than WIJD

By I, CrazyLegsKC, CC BY-SA 3.0

WWJD bracelets were common place when I was younger. The effort in this movement was to encourage people to consider a choices and actions through the question, "What would Jesus do?" It is noble to think about what Jesus would do in different situations and I have asked this question myself. 

I am sure this question has given numerous people reason to pause maybe make a wise choice. However, from what I know about human beings, the chances are greater this question was used to justify a decision already made or to guilt someone to a particular action. So while it is a helpful question, it is less helpful than "What is Jesus doing?"

The obvious difference in WIJD is the verb tense. It is a question asked of the present, not of the past. What would Jesus do is something we often have to guess at. What is Jesus doing can be brought into greater clarity with spiritual disciplines and community.

Practices like discernment, prayer, reflection and contemplation are all helpful for us to pause and consider what is Jesus doing right now. In our midst, at this moment. 

Christians of all denominations believe a wide variety of things about Jesus, but there is at least one thing all Christians can agree on. We all want to be where Jesus is. We all want to be where Jesus is going. We all want to be on what Jesus is doing.

So lets start asking.  

The Spiritual Movement From Mimicking to Imitating Jesus

In a few places in Paul's letters, he speaks about imitating him or imitating Christ (1 Corinthians 4 and 11 also in Philippians 3). In my translations the invitation is to imitate not to mimic. I raise this for consideration because at least one distinction between imitating and mimicking is the direction of trust. Here is what I mean.

My sons are four and nine years old and they will, as children are prone to do, mimic my behavior. They parrot my words and mirror my actions. They trust that by mimicking me they are learning the things needed to survive and do well. Likewise, Christians trust Jesus and mimic him. Jesus shows us how to live and in mimicking him we grow and learn.

The direction of trust when we mimic flows from the student to the teacher. This is flow is inverted when we imitate. 

As my sons grow older, it is my hope that they would slow their mimicking and increase their imitating. This movement requires that I as their father trust them to act in ways that I would hope they would act. I will not be able to control their actions or be present in every situation for them to know how to mimic. I have to trust my sons in order for them to imitate me. I have to give them freedom of choice and the possibility of failing or, even experience pain. 

Likewise, Jesus is no longer physically present walking with each of us. We are not able to mimic him when it comes to contemporary problems and issues. How do we mimic Jesus in the face of the climate crisis? How would we mimic Jesus in knowing the ethicacy in the science of genetics?

Those who trust Jesus, over time begin to see that Jesus trusts us. Jesus does not desire us to stay at the mimic stage (all be it an important stage). Jesus desires us to mimic him so that we can move to imitating him. We will mess up. We will feel pain and suffering. We will miss the mark and participate in sin. The Good News is in part the reality that as imitators of Christ we are forgiven and trusted. 

It is safe to mimic Christ. It is faithful to imitate Christ. Asking "what would Jesus do?" is a question for mimicking. Asking "what is Jesus trusting me to do/be?" is a question for imitators.

Curiosity over Inquiry

In our current polarized political and social climate, many have observed that some of us stay in a little bubble, insulated from hearing others. This is a problem. Part of the solution to the little bubbles we live in is asking questions. If we think that it is unhealthy for everyone to live insulated from one another, then questions are a way that we can move beyond ourselves, develop empathy, and foster understanding. In my observation, the problem with that solution is that we have forgotten how to ask questions to achieve this end. Specifically, we are a people who inquire over a people who are curious.

Inquiring is a word that comes from an idea of "seeking". Seeking is something that we do when we know what we are looking for. When I lose my keys, I seek them out. I know what they look like and so when I find them I know it right away. Bono and the band U2 know what they are seeking in the song says "I still haven't found what I'm lookin' for."  

When the spiritual journey is framed as a quest seeking a known variable, then we will ask questions like an inquirer. When we ask questions of another in the spirit of inquiring, then we are are not checking our judgment at the door. Sometimes our questions, under the guise of understanding, are in fact just a way to gain knowledge to build an effective counter-argument. Inquiring is the way of asking questions that does not require us to leave our own biases and judgments out of the question. Journalists are great at inquiring because they are looking for something (usually a story, but the best journalists are more curious.) Journalists often know ahead of time how they want an interview to go, so they use particular inquiries to direct the conversation to their desired destination. 

Curiosity is a word that comes from the Latin word "care". When we are curious we are asking questions with a spirit of care toward the other. It is a spirit that is not judgmental and thus we are willing and able to ask questions without "seeking" a predetermined outcome or goal. The curious person is a person who is interested in you and your story just for the sake of who you are - not to get anything from it. It is why curious people are interesting to be around because they are caring to all that they meet.

Using a simple Ngram search, we can see the number of uses of the word inquiry is more prevalent than the word curiosity and that both are near all time lows in usage. 

The more we are in the spirit of inquiry and less in the spirit of curiosity the more we may remain in our filter bubbles of confirmation bias. Would asking questions without judgment break us out of our bubble? I wonder...