Fads bug me. American Idol bugs the heck out of me. I boycott Abercrombie & Fitch. Why? Because of soft-porn magazines? Because the Baptists and James Dobson tell me to? Nope….because they bug the heck out of me. Here’s another one: WWJD.

I’m here to tell you that I’ve never had a WWJD bracelet. I have some sense of pride in this fact…the same sense of pride that I have during Christmas time when I sport my “What I don’t want for Christmas: Abercrombie & Fitch” tee-shirt that I created with an old shirt and a Sharpie.

So, as I entered Charles Sheldon’s 1896 classic In His Steps I expected to be annoyed. Why? Because it’s not only where WWJD came from it’s also one of the forefathers to the Social Gospel. Neither phenomenon really jumps out and grabs me.

Here’s what I found though. I really like In His Steps. Not that it made it through my ringer of Christian literature unscathed. But, this book has a good heart and points out a serious problem of the church today.

In His Steps in its broadest scope is about the transformation of a fictional man named Henry Maxwell. He’s transformed from a showy pastor worried about performance and a happy crowd to a man of prayer and concern for the state of the world around him.

The book was written in 31 installments for a magazine, each chapter ending with a mild cliffhanger. Chapter 1 ends with a homeless man falling down, perhaps dead, in the front of the Sunday morning service at Henry Maxwell’s church. We find out in chapter 2 that this man has died which profoundly effects Pastor Maxwell. The next Sunday he challenges his middle-class (and above) church to make a commitment to ask themselves What Would Jesus Do? before every decision for a year and then actually act upon what they feel Jesus would do.

The rest of the book is a glimpse of the family tree that sprouts from this challenge. Many people feel as though they need to make changes at their occupations when they ask what Jesus would do. This is where I sensed my most frustration with the book, but in another sense this is probably where the book shines most accurately.

Here’s an example. A newspaper editor decides that he will no longer report the results of the local prize fights. He also will not publish his newspaper on Sundays. This feels accurate to me, because I’ve been in so many church settings where people make commitments to watch nothing worse than PG-13 movies or to burn their “secular” CDs, or to not kiss their girlfriends until they are married. So, I think Sheldon paints an accurate picture of how people would respond to a request of the WWJD variety.

Now, just to add a word of clarification. I’m not saying any of these things are inherently wrong. Seriously, you paid 15 bucks for each of those Metallica CDs…if you want to break them with a hammer and throw them into a fire, by all means, feel free. If you own a newspaper and don’t want to report the results to a prize fight…proceed. What frustrates me is the excitement people feel toward the application of principles while ignoring the Biblical Truths that they are based on. Example? …Hearing 15 “amens” in a small Baptist church when the pastor talks about the wiles of the movie theaters and only hearing the faint sound of a snore as the pastor mentions something like love your neighbor or don’t lust after your neighbor’s wife.

This is my problem with something like WWJD. The concept behind it is great. Think about what you know about Jesus and act accordingly. The problem is that the question leads to some pretty arbitrary answers. Examples from In His Steps:

Donald Marsh, president of Lincoln College answers the question of WWJD by entering the political elections that occur later in the week. The only catch is that Mr. Marsh had: “never before entered a city primary, and whose face was not even known to the ward politicians”.

One of Edward Norman’s answers to WWJD is to fully back the campaign of 4-day old politician Donald Marsh through his newspaper. He writes: “The NEWS simply calls the attention of all decent citizens to the fact that this ticket contains the names of whiskey men, and the line is sharply and distinctly drawn between the saloon and corrupt management such as we have known for years….Shall we continue the rule of rum and boodle and shameless incompetency, or shall we, as President Marsh said in his noble speech, rise as good citizens…?”

Alexander Powers quits his job at the railway in answer to WWJD. We find out that: “since his action in resigning his position, neither his wife not daughter had appeared in public. No one but himself knows the bitterness of that family estrangement and misunderstanding of the higher motive.”

Hopefully, these examples show why In His Steps can be frustrating. On the one hand, I think these types of examples are likely. On the other hand, Sheldon paints a very positive picture of his character’s decisions (although, to be fair, he does show the characters changing mildly from their extreme adoption of WWJD…“mildly” is the key word). I would argue that some of the decisions made in the book would have been wiser had they been discussed among peers.

Where Sheldon does his best work is in portraying the selfishness and apathy of Christians. He shows them living in their lives of luxury ignoring the poverty and hurt that is all around them. This is where the book shows itself to be most convicting in my opinion. I heard Peter Singer (quite possibly the only In His Steps review ever to mention Peter Singer) in an interview say something similar to this… Imagine your BMW is stuck on the train tracks, also stuck on the train tracks is a 3-year-old toddler. The train is on its way and you can only save one. How many of us would sacrifice the child and rush to the salvation of the BMW? Hopefully none of us would…but, isn’t that in essence what we are doing when we buy our excesses in America while children starve all over the world?

This sort of an idea shows up throughout In His Steps. The difference is that it’s directed at Christians. Sheldon through fiction says to us…look, you’re preaching love your neighbor, your hymn says Jesus, all to leave and follow Thee?…but you’re just sitting there. In Sheldon’s own words through his Rev. Maxwell character:
“We have, unconsciously, lazily, selfishly, formally grown into a discipleship that Jesus himself would not acknowledge. He would say to many of us when we cry, ‘Lord, Lord,’ ‘I never know you!’ Are we ready to take up the cross?”

It is admonishment like that which makes me want to hand out free copies of In His Steps. I just have some disagreements with how Sheldon implies we should take care of these problems.

On a literary level, Sheldon doesn’t really challenge us too much with his characters. They seem real enough at times as I’ve already said, but they lack a struggle with good vs. evil that exists in real life. Basically, once your on Sheldon’s good list you stay there, once you’re on his bad list (which narrows it down to about 2 people – Sheldon was an optimist I guess) you stay on his bad list.

Despite my negativity I really did enjoy the hours I spent with In His Steps. The spirit of this book is well intentioned, and at times the book is quite challenging. So, I can easily recommend it to anyone who finds themselves frequenting the doors of those buildings we call churches. The good of In His Steps far outweighs the bad in my opinion….unlike American Idol, A&F, and WWJD bracelets….also, in my opinion.

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You can read In His Steps on the internet at:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/sheldon/ihsteps.html

Recommended: Yes