WWJD?
JANUARY 12 2022.
Each Saturday morning, I receive an email from John Mauldin, a financial forecaster. He is an entertaining writer and I usually read his predictions. For some reason finances interests me, and, although I am a cautious investor and quite conservative, I, at my stage in life – born in 1928 – am more interested in the return of my saving than return on them.
In his missive of January 8, 2022, he starts off with: “Some evangelical Christian groups wear cryptic little “WWJD?” pins. It stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s a good question to ask when you face a moral dilemma. The economic dilemma, while different, becomes clearer when we ask what certain mortals will do. That will be our framework as we consider what 2022 will bring.”
John Mauldin is, I think, not an informed Christian, which is evident from the paragraph I quoted where he sees Jesus as a moral teacher, having little to do with everyday life, such as economics: there the question what Jesus would do, is irrelevant, so says John Mauldin, and with him almost all others.
Still, “What Would Jesus Do?” is a relevant question. John the Baptizer, in a spat of uncertainty, sent some of his followers to Jesus in a quest for his genuine origin. Jesus’ simple reply was: the sick are healed, the dead raised. In other words, “With him the Kingdom that John had so fervently proclaimed, had come.”
REBUKE
That became clear in two everyday examples. When the mother-in-law of his disciple Peter fell ill, Jesus ‘rebuked’ her illness and she was healed. When the experienced sailors, his fishermen disciples, were caught in such a severe storm that they feared for their lives, Jesus ‘rebuked’ the wind. “Rebuking’ points to a severe dressing down, and a return to the original status. “Rebuke” in these two cases were examples of human-physical and atmospheric conditions that had been brought about by the integral influence of The Evil One on all of life. Today, for instance, the Covid occurrence originates with “The Prince of this World.” In 1John 5:19 we are told that, “The entire world is under the ‘control’ of the evil one”, including wars, holocaust and pandemics. Our economic system, at the root of our environmental eschaton–inducing eclipse, is caused by ‘the evil one’. In ‘rebuking’ the wind, for a moment, New Creation conditions were called into being, because Jesus is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. His kingdom is not a moral affair: his Kingdom embraces all of life. John 10: 10 tells me that, “The thief (Satan in this case) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I, Jesus, have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
There we have it: Jesus came not to teach us morals, not to live ethically: he came to teach us how to live, and that to the full.
How to live?
Dr. Sabine Dramm, in summarizing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, singles out his one overriding conviction: “Specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.” In his essay, Dein Reich Komme, (Your Kingdom Come), Bonhoeffer writes, “He (Christ) does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond; rather, he gives us back to the earth as his loyal children.”
Indigenous teachings,
We can learn an awful lot from the original, ‘first nation’ people in the world. On August 13 1992, almost 30 years ago I bought for $27.95 The Wisdom of the Elders, a series of 50 mini essays exploring the age-old wisdom of indigenous people word-wide: they all see the world and what it contains as holy. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is another great example of earthly wisdom, a regimen we have failed to adopt, to our great disadvantage.
WWJD?
What would Jesus do if he were around today and faced with Covid and vaccination? There are a lot of church people who refuse the means of science in connection with the current epidemic, probably the first in a series.
God has given us our bodies as our personal possession to treasure. He also tells us to love others as ourselves. Vaccination is a good example of this love: by protecting ourselves, in the best possible way, admitting that the shots are not perfect, by these injections, we confess our love for our own bodies, while also providing a measure of defense for others, both expressing our communal love as the Bible commands.
WWJD? Christ, in everything like us, except for sin, with a body susceptible to disease and, yes, death, would submit his holy body to these preventive elements, these vaccinations, of course.