What Jesus Wouldn’t Do

WWJD?

This acronymic question adorns bumpers and bracelets across the nation. In the unlikely event that you are unaware, it stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”

I suppose one response is, “God only knows.”

I certainly don’t. If there was indeed a Jesus, in the biblical sense, what Jesus did or did not do is highly speculative. The notion of a historical Jesus is widely supported and a field of serious scholarship. I have neither the interest nor the patience to traverse even the modest Wikipedia entry, but be my guest.

The scholarship may or may not be accurate. Its veracity is questionable at least in so far as that various sources are contradictory. It reminds of one of my favorite quotes, from where long forgotten: “There are 7 (or choose a number) major religions and they can’t all be right.”

When judging the reliability of any historical record, one need only jump ahead several millennia and consider scholars excavating 2025 videos from Fox News or yellowed copies of the New York Post to understand that declaring any version of history accurate is a fool’s errand.

But allow me the grace to stipulate to the basic idea of the historical and the mystical Jesus: A modest man, living in relative poverty, filled with love and compassion, champion of the downtrodden and willing to risk all to speak truth to power.

So, I surely don’t know “What Jesus Would Do,” but I might hazard a guess at what Jesus would not do. Which takes us to the front page of the New York Times.

Two events reported with straight reportorial faces might qualify under the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s succinct definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

A rather unfortunate word choice for a SCOTUS Justice, but we knew what he meant.

The events to which I refer both featured outlandish costumes, outsized egos, unseemly preening, extravagant surroundings, one with red carpets the other with blue, and accompanied by an absurd level of breathless excitement. Short of pornography, but bordering on the obscene.

One was the Met Gala.

The other? The conclave to choose a new pope.

To be fair to Catholicism, the conclave may only be runner-up in the race to commit more sins or violate more Commandments, but it’s a close call. Pride, greed, envy, lust, coveting, gluttony, idolatry . . . just to name a handful. Each event was chock full of ‘em.

The Catholic Church is the planet’s second largest real estate holder, bested only by Britain’s Royal Family. I don’t know which entity wins the precious gem contest, but they’re both in the bejeweled stratosphere. And perhaps on this one night, the Met Gala is in the running.

I dare say that Jesus, to my limited understanding, would assiduously avoid both events. The Met Gala would not let him through their velvet ropes even if he wished to visit for a moment. He would have been more likely among the Palestinian activists who were blithely ignored by the glittering entourage of social climbers.

The doings at the Vatican would either confuse or enrage the Prince of Peace, who would not be able to reconcile his gentle and modest teachings with the garish display of pride, gaudy red robes, contrived solemnity and political machinations.

Though Jesus probably couldn’t imagine Catholicism at all, he might have had a beer with the late Pope Francis. And lest my Catholic friends and family disown me, the social justice bona fides of Catholicism are admirable and practiced by many millions worldwide.

And how might we reconcile the front page coverage of both exorbitant indulgences in America’s so-called newspaper of record? Shuttled to the margins were the usual and normalized tragedies du jour. Children starving, natural disasters, the despoiling of Earth, our descent into fascism, unrelenting genocide in Gaza – I, and you, could go on.

According to the U.N., nearly 750 million people in the world go hungry every day. Half of children’s deaths are due to severe malnutrition. 9 million people die from hunger-related causes every year.

It just seems a lousy time for the Cardinals in Rome and the peacocks at the Met to preen and posture.

But, but, you say, “The Met Gala was for charity!” They raised $31 million!!

For costumes.

But at least women were allowed to attend that event.