From 1970 through about 1972, I lived inside of a one person religion that I
created. I thought, as all people who create a religion think, that I had
stumbled into the ultimate relationship with God. I thought that I was on the
path of personal righteousness and of ultimate truth. The actual truth is that
I started down a path toward my own destruction. With the encouragement of my youth director,
I read the book In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. The book is fiction, but it
reads like it could all have happened as recorded. After a dramatic encounter
that changed his life, the pastor in this book admonished his flock that before
every action they should ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” Or as we have come to know it, WWJD. On the
surface this seems like such a good thing to do. This seems like the obvious
thing a true follower of Jesus would do, i.e. if I want to know what to do
next, just ask myself, “What would Jesus do?”
Nothing less. Nothing more. So that very day, I decided to do exactly
that.
I dove in and was in over my head in a matter of days. When
I asked myself “What would Jesus do?” and applied it to my life at the time, I
found several problems right out of the gate. For starters, I was the lead
singer in a local garage band. And we were pretty good as garage bands go. When I asked myself if Jesus would sing rock
songs in a band, the answer was a definite “no!”. My inner voice of Jesus told
me to not only quit the band immediately, but to tell them why I was quitting.
At the next rehearsal after we were all set up and ready to go, I got my
friends’ attention and told them that God didn’t want me to sing in the band
any longer. They looked at me like I was
from outer space. Dan, the organizer of the band asked me, "David, can't God use you through this band?" And I said, "No." Billy, the drummer,
looked at the others and said, “I told you he was going to do something like
this.” As I got in my car to leave, I was on cloud nine! I had now rid my life
of everything that Jesus wouldn’t want me to do. It was the official beginning
of a life of eternal bliss in the "perfect will of God."
But by the time I got home I had thought of something else.
I had the male lead in the school musical Annie Get Your Gun. As Frank Butler, I was the hard living, gun
slinging, whiskey guzzling hero of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. The only person
badder than me was my side kick Annie Oakley who could shoot circles around
anybody. In one song, “I’m a Bad, Bad Man” I sang, “There’s a girl in Tennessee
who’s sorry she met up with me. Can’t go back to Tennessee I’m a bad, bad
man.” I asked myself, “Would Jesus play
this role and have this ‘testimony’ before His school and His community?” Of course not? What does a play like this and a role like
this have to do with the Kingdom of God !!? Nothing. All of a sudden it didn’t matter that the
curtain would go up in just a few weeks. It didn’t matter that there was no one
else in the school as musically qualified to sing that role, as gifted as I to
act that part, that even if there was there was no time for him to learn the
part. All that mattered was that Jesus
would not be Frank Butler and I needed to quit the play.
Once I was standing in the parking lot of a transmission
shop in my hometown of Enterprise, Alabama. The man I was talking with asked me
to pray for him. So we both got down on
our knees in the parking lot and prayed out loud as customers drove in and
walked past us. Jesus must have been
proud of me. But during my senior year
at Enterprise High School, it got worse and worse. Would Jesus study American
history? Would he study trigonometry? No
he wouldn’t. So I stopped studying and read my Bible instead. My grades suffered
and my relationships with my classmates and teachers suffered. My mother went to my youth director and said, "I want the old David back." He told her that I was indeed on a "path of righteousness" and to not worry about it. I could go on and on about the things I said and did
during those years of WWJD. Some of it was very strange. All of it was very
uncomfortable. I descended into a
private hell on earth. It was a spiritual black hole. Light went in but no
light got out. All in the name of Jesus.
I could go on and on with the things I
said and did in the name of WWJD, but I think you get the idea.
The irony of my attempts at being Jesus is that Jesus never
asked me to be Him. He asked me only to allow Him to be Him in me. I couldn’t
do what Jesus did. Jesus healed the sick, turned the water into wine, raised
the dead and walked on water. I couldn’t have done any of that. But there is
one thing Jesus did every day that I could have done. On any given day, in
every situation, Jesus did the loving thing. So instead of WWJD, the question
becomes WDJD, What DID Jesus Do? He loved people. All I needed to have done
through those horrible years was to love people. To always do the loving thing
in every situation.
If you’re God and you love someone in agony of his own
making trying to do the will of God, how do you get through to him? Several things happened over a period of
weeks, months and years, but the most dramatic occurrence involved a bowl of
turnip greens at my kitchen table. My little sister sat at the end of the table
(so was always asked to get the tea). My mother sat beside me. My brother sat
across from me and my father sat beside him across from my mother. As usual in
the summer, mother had prepared a dinner of meat from my grandfather's cattle farm out the New Brockton Highway and fresh vegetables from my
Granny’s farm out the Damascus Road. Yes, the Damascus Road. As Mom was passing the
turnip greens to me, and I loved turnip greens, the thought occurred to me, “Do
I know that it is God’s will for me to
eat turnip greens?” Since I wasn’t sure, I passed them across the table to my
brother. My mother took note. My brother
was not as holy as I was. He was not on a path of WWJD, but was a college
student mostly away from home doing things that college students away from home
do. My mother asked me, “David, you don’t want any turnip greens?” And I just said “No”. As my brother passed the turnip greens to
Dad, he said the most ridiculous thing that I had ever heard in my life. He
said, “Nah. God doesn’t want me to eat
any.” I thought, “Why would God care
whether or not my unholy brother ate turnip greens?” And then I thought, “Why would God care if I
ate turnip greens?” I asked my Dad to pass me the turnip greens and I ate a
huge helping. That day at my kitchen table with my family and that bowl of
turnip greens was the beginning of an awareness and a healing that continues to
this day. “What would Jesus do?” If
Martha had fixed turnip greens, he would have eaten them. It would have been the
loving thing to do. Martha, Mary and Lazarus were his friends. Mary may have sat at His feet, but Martha had gone to a lot of trouble for Him.
For reasons that I won’t get into, I stayed in that
play. I didn’t quit. But instead of
enjoying the three performances, I was very concerned as I sang about not being
in “the perfect will of God.” The next weekend I sang in a revival at a local
Baptist church. I sang “I’ll Tell the
World that I’m a Christian.” During the “invitation” the student who had done
my make up in Annie Get Your Gun “came forward” and “professed Christ as her
Savior.” After the service she told me that it was because of my influence that
she had “accepted Christ.” As much as that helped her and me at the time, now I don’t try
to convert people to Jesus. I just try to love people and leave the rest to Him.
As I read the gospels, Jesus didn’t try to convert people either. He just loved
people and tried to help them. Jesus was a Jew. He never became a Christian. Why
would Jesus need to be a Christian to do the things He did? He was Jesus.
That play was in 1970, 49 years ago and yet I’m still
embarrassed for myself that I behaved the way I did. I’m embarrassed that I caused the director so much agony and anxiety. I'm embarrassed for myself that I prayed on
my knees at that transmission shop embarrassing people and making a fool of
myself and my friend. I’m embarrassed about all of it. But this is 2019 and nobody remembers any of
that but me. At a high school reunion years
ago and years after I graduated, my classmates remembered me as a kind and
loving person. I’m grateful for that as
I had feared the worst.
So you want to be “in the center of God’s will?” You want to
“do what Jesus did?” Then love and
forgive the people who come across your path today. Don't try to be Jesus. He only wants you to be yourself. After all, He made you. And by all means, eat some
turnip greens.
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