Oh, and as a kind of preface to my response to the idea that there's a lack of "competition" for the shallow, right-wing "Christian-themed entertainment" of the Left Behind books, here's an excerpt from a long essay on one of the best-selling books of all time — Charles Sheldon's In His Steps. This is from the Jan./Feb. 1999 issue of PRISM magazine. The occasion for the article was the release of the paperback version of a revisiting of Sheldon's story by an obscure Baptist Sunday school teacher named John Grisham.
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Street Christianity: What is Jesus doing?
"WWJD?" bracelets are the hottest-selling items in Christian bookstores since the hey day of Hal Lindsey's premature prophecies. Millions of these bracelets have sold (at $1.50 each), adorning the wrists of youth groups across America. Then there are the T-shirts, mugs, caps, lapel pins, study guides and even WWJD?: The Album.
WWJD?, of course, stands for "what would Jesus do?" — a question made popular a hundred years ago by Charles Sheldon's international bestseller In His Steps.
Sheldon was a pastor in Topeka, Kans., and wrote serialized stories to read for his Sunday evening sermons. In His Steps is the story of the First Church of Raymond and the revolutionary transformation of its congregants and their city when they pledge to ask "what would Jesus do?" before taking any action.
First Church's pastor, Henry Maxwell, is inspired to take this pledge after the death of Jack Manning, an unemployed man who came to Raymond seeking work. After being repeatedly turned aside by the wealthy, complacent members of First Church, Manning hears the congregation sing "All for Jesus." Interrupting the service, he staggers forward and says, "It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do?" Manning then — a bit melodramatically, perhaps — collapses from a fatal heart attack.
In His Steps is the story of how twelve people following Jesus changed their city. They took action and, like the first Christians, turned their world upside down.
For Sheldon, "what would Jesus do?" was not merely a question to guide personal piety. He considered complacency and indifference to the poor to be the greatest sins of the First Church congregation. But these sins are hardly ever mentioned — or even thought of as sins — by the millions sporting WWJD? merchandise. The purpose of this stuff, according to one merchant, is to "wear and share the bracelet to bravely witness Jesus with [sic] your friends, and to keep you from caving in to temptations." Sheldon's vision of revolutionary social transformation is reduced to a "witnessing tool" — a gimmick akin to an "I Found It" button.
Resisting temptation is, of course, a good thing. But Sheldon would have been disappointed with the narrow, individualistic piety his question has come to represent. In the words of another bracelet seller, "What if you were tempted to cheat in school? What if you were asked to lie or take advantage of another? What would Jesus do? Would he steal? Lie? Cheat?"
It's almost as if the question has become "what wouldn't Jesus do?" This idea of discipleship is entirely negative. "Christians are people who don't do X, Y or Z." True enough, but what exactly do we do?
Well, we wear bracelets. We "witness" — spreading this discipleship-without-content to others and encouraging them to join us in abstaining from X, Y and Z.
We become so preoccupied with out own non-lying, non-stealing, non-cheating-in-school selves that we never even give a thought to the Jack Mannings out there, desperately in need of our help. WWJD? bracelets become like the phylacteries of the Pharisees, reminding us to tithe our dill and cumin. …
The spiritually dead First Churchers of Sheldon's story did not lie, cheat or steal, but neither did they lift a finger to help poor Jack. Taking the WWJD? pledge seriously has to mean more than ending where In His Steps began. WWJD? bracelets may help us to say, along with the rich young ruler, that we have followed all the rules. But there is more, says Jesus, much more. "Come, follow me." …
John Grisham's The Street Lawyer never asks, explicitly, "what would Jesus do?" — in fact it hardly mentions Jesus at all. Yet it tells the same story, conveying Sheldon's message of revival, rebirth and revolution. The bestseller begins in Grisham's favorite setting, a high-powered big-city law firm. Instead of a local pastor his protagonist is, as usual, a wealthy young lawyer, this one named Michael Brock.
As with In His Steps, the most serious sin in The Street Lawyer is neglect of the poor. The Jack Manning/Christ figure in this legal thriller brings a similar prophetic message, but underscores it with a loaded .45.
Grisham's tale begins with Brock and eight of his fellow attorneys taken hostage by a heavily armed homeless man. Pointing a gun in our hero's face, the man asks, "How much money did you make last year?" And then, "How much did you give away? How much did you give to the hungry?"
"You spend more on fancy coffee than I do on meals," he says. "Why can't you help the poor, the sick, the homeless? You have so much."
The Street Lawyer is a slightly secularized version of In His Steps, but it is also Grisham's most overtly Christian novel so far. A Southern Baptist, Grisham is an active church member who teaches Sunday school and goes on mission trips. His novels typically uphold the values of his faith in that they include less sex and profanity than most thrillers (which is to say, they've upheld bracelet morality).
But Grisham also knows there's more to Christianity than just the moral probity of the old motion picture decency code. In books like A Time to Kill, The Chamber and especially The Street Lawyer, he reminds us that faith requires more than simply abstaining from certain sins.
Michael Brock's journey from self-obsessed yuppie to advocate for the powerless is a portrait of discipleship. Brock's transformation is a kind of pilgrim's progress, a journey of faith. And faith requires him to take sides.
Much of The Street Lawyer takes place in the basement of those churches that have done what Jesus would do, because they are where Jesus would be. More than that — they are doing what Jesus is doing. They are where Jesus is.
Brock's tour guide, his Virgil, to the underworld of agencies, shelters, kitchens and ministries is a tireless lawyer/advocate/soup-server/prophet tellingly named Mordecai Green. Mordecai's blunt estimation of the city's churches is similar to Charles Sheldon's: "Churches were either good or bad, with no blurring of the lines. They either opened their doors to the homeless or kept them locked."
Such a standard unites conviction with direction. It confronts the subjectivity of WWJD? with some objective questions: Are your doors open or locked shut? Can the homeless and hopeless turn to you for aid, shelter and comfort? Whose side are you on? Whose side are you by?
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