The modern-day Christian marketing machine is becoming expert in figuring out how to milk every last dime from the Christian consumer (that would be after tithes and offerings, of course). Even non-Christians know what the letters WWJD stand for (for those of you who don’t, it’s “What Would Jesus Do"). For awhile the acronym popped up on everything – from jewelry and bookmarks to T-shirts and casual clothing. When the desire for the products waned, marketers looked for other alternatives that would deliver a Christian message and could be sold to a public hungry for another God-related fad. We were given FROG (“Fully Relying on God"), complete with a frog logo, and DOG (“Depending on God"), with its puppy logo. These trends were short-lived, however, and never became as popular as WWJD. And really, there weren’t that many animals whose names lended themselves to a Godly acronym. I mean, how would you work a Christian message into, say, COW, or PIG, or HIPPOPOTAMUS? Some marketing firm is probably cursing Adam for picking such un-God-friendly names for the animals in the first place.
But never let it be said that the folks on the other side of the fence are stupid. It didn’t take long for the non-Christian marketing world to pick up on the success of WWJD. These days Jesus works for both the sacred and the secular sides of the consumer market. There’s now a whole plethora of “What Would Jesus…" products and causes begging for Christians and non-Christians alike to purchase and support.
The book “What Would Jesus Eat?" and its accompanying cookbook use conjecture and assumption to say that if you eat like the Savior, you’ll be fit and trim and happy and healthy and long-lived. (Watch sales of that one pick up right after the Christmas holiday.) Substituting “how" for “what" gives us “How Would Jesus Raise A Child?", a book that offers parenting tips based on Jesus’s teachings.
The attempt to use the Lord’s name in advertising is not limited to products. Groups with widely-differing political, social, and economic agendas have jumped on the Jesus bandwagon to get people to listen to their rhetoric. “How Would Jesus Vote?" has been used by a number of local groups to encourage voting along certain party lines for several years now. “What Would Jesus Drive?" is a campaign launched by a religious organization as an anti-SUV statement. (He would have driven a Honda Civic, by the way.) There are sites that give guidelines on what you should (and should not) download from and upload to the Internet, using as their criteria “What Would Jesus Download?" and “What Would Jesus Blog?", respectively. And various stories written by the media capitalize on the WWJD theme by altering it. Topics covered include: the faith of Supreme Court nominees (“How Would Jesus Rule?"); opposition to the way our military obtains information during wartime (“How Would Jesus Justify Torture?"); pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives because of their religious beliefs (“What Would Jesus Prescribe?"); trends in contemporary Christian music (“What Would Jesus Rap?"); and how to create Web sites for religious organizations (“What Would Jesus Design?"). For each of these examples, there are literally hundreds more on every topic imaginable (and some you don’t want to imagine).
There are the truly humorous applications of the phrase, like the artist who features his cartoon artwork in a blog entitled, “What Would Jesus Draw?" (The artist’s first name is, coincidentally enough, Jesus.) Or the site with stories of people who see religious icons in everyday objects (like chocolate drippings, half-empty bottles of lotion, or a turtle’s shell), called “What Would Jesus See?"
(As an interesting aside, I chose the title for this article because I thought it was absurd enough to make my point. Imagine my surprise when one of my Web searches took me to an article about a trend in some churches towards combining the physical and the spiritual, being more in tune with wellness and fitness. Want to hazard a guess as to what the title of the article was? No, really, go ahead and guess.)
A subset of this group are those who try to convince you that this is what Jesus would do, without actually using the catch phrase, and therefore persuade you to purchase their product or join their cause. In my opinion, the most absurd example of this comes from PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They state that we should not eat meat because Jesus didn’t. They claim He was a member of the Essenes, a Jewish religious sect that followed a vegetarian diet and opposed animal sacrifice. PETA promotes the idea by using the tagline that Jesus is the “Prince of Peas" and therefore we should forego eating meat as well, in order to extend the message of “God is love" to those in the animal kingdom by not eating them. You’ll have to pardon me if I take this one with a huge grain of salt (that’s okay because salt isn’t an animal, right?). Scripture doesn’t back up this claim; neither does history. And with PETA’s history of truth in advertising, they can’t understand why people laugh or get angry? “Prince of Peas" may be cute to them, but that phrase offended a sizeable segment of the population. And you don’t convince people to join your side by ticking them off.
So what’s going on with all these advertisements, anyway? I recognize the reason secular marketing firms would gravitate to using variations of the WWJD theme. It’s a Christian catch-phrase that has made it into the social vernacular, kind of like “Where’s the beef?" Nearly everyone gets the association, and it’s not a great leap to transfer that association to a product or cause. As a moneymaker, it’s a runaway hit. I expect that.
What about Christian-themed products and services, though? Are they truly trying to get out a spiritual message, or are they too coming up with these ideas simply to make a buck – and lots of them? In recent years the Christian market has been saturated with items playing off the popularity of themes like the prayer of Jubal, Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ", the praise and worship movement, and “The Da Vinci Code". I don’t mind folks earning a living, and I applaud the efforts of those who want to get the Gospel message out in creative ways. Still, I fail to see how purchasing a thong with the Lord’s Prayer stitched into the waistband is going to teach people about God.
Is the concern truly that we should do what Jesus would do in a given situation, that doing so makes it right? After seeing how He is used in today’s advertising blitz, I think it’s safe to say it’s highly doubtful. If you’re as irritated as I am with this moneygrubbing media blitz and really want to get back to the basics of who Jesus is and what He would have us do, then I encourage you to pre-order my book, “What Would Jesus Endorse?" (due out sometime in 2011 if I can find a publisher), along with the matching T-shirt, coffee mug, key ring, screensaver, fashion bracelet, necklace with matching earrings, original oil painting in mahogany frame, and action figure set. Hurry, because supplies are limited – and you know it’s what God would want you to do.
