"What did you expect me to do?" A Response
A few days ago, while scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed several of my friends who are either progressive “Christians,” or seem to have left the faith altogether had all shared a very passionate post that has, as of my writing this article, been shared over three and a half thousand times, and according to the author, he posted a video of himself narrating it on TikTok and it has been viewed over 800,000 times. I felt that it warranted a response because of the central theme of this post which seems to be increasingly prevalent in our world today. What is that theme? Well, read the post for yourself and see if you can put your finger on it. I’ll pick back up right after.
Original Post:
What the hell did you expect me to do?
You told me to love my neighbors, to model the life of Jesus. To be kind and considerate, and to stand up for the bullied.
You told me to love people, consider others as more important than myself. "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight." We sang it together, pressing the volume pedal and leaning our hearts into the chorus.
You told me to love my enemies, to even do good to those who wish for bad things. You told me to never "hate" anyone and to always find ways to encourage people.
You told me it's better to give than receive, to be last instead of first. You told me that money doesn't bring happiness and can even lead to evil, but taking care of the needs of others brings great joy and life to the soul.
You told me that Jesus looks at what I do for the least-of-these as the true depth of my faith. You told me to focus on my own sin instead of trying to police it in others. You told me to be accepting and forgiving.
I paid attention.
I took every lesson.
And I did what you told me.
But now, you call me a libtard. A queer-lover.
You call me "woke." A backslider.
You call me a heretic. A child of the devil.
You call me a false prophet. A reprobate leading people to gates of hell.
You call me soft. A snowflake. A socialist.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
You passed out the "WWJD" bracelets.
I took it to heart.
I thought you were serious, apparently not.
We were once friends. But now, the lines have been drawn. You hate nearly all the people I love. You stand against nearly all the things I stand for. I'm trying to see a way forward, but it's hard when I survey all the hurt, harm, and darkness that comes in the wake of your beliefs and presence.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
I believed it all the way.
I'm still believing it all the way.
Which leaves me wondering, what happened to you?
(Written by Chris Kratzer)
What do you think the central theme was? If you ask me, it can be summarized in a single sentence: “Progressive Christians are following the teachings of Jesus and the conservative evangelicals are not.” Sound about right? There is one major point that stuck out to me in Mr. Kratzer’s post that I would like to use as a guide for this critical response as it embodies the heart of his post, indeed the central theme I just mentioned. Toward the end Kratzer writes, “You passed out the WWJD bracelets. I took it to heart,” and here lies the focal point of the error in the central theme. For those who don’t know or may have forgotten, “WWJD” stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” Chris seems to think that his interactions with the world are based on this principle; that he treats others how Jesus would. This is where my critique begins. The problem isn’t asking “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s an amazing thing to ask ourselves constantly! Here is the problem though: To demonstrate, do a little thought experiment with me.
I want you to imagine a scenario where you would have to stop and ask that very question. “What would Jesus do in this situation?” No really, think of something that could happen to you where you are unsure exactly how to respond or react, and you would legitimately have to think hard about what Jesus would do were he in your situation. Do you have a situation in mind? Good! Now, I want you to ask yourself this question: “What Would Marcus Aurelius Do?” Are you stumped? How are you supposed to know what a Roman Emperor from the second century would do in any given situation? The answer is pretty straight-forward: You would have to read about him. Read about the things that he did as emperor, better yet, read the words that he himself wrote! After getting acquainted with what he wrote, you will have a much easier time figuring out what he would do if he were in your shoes.
The same goes for Jesus - with a notable exception that you may already have thought of - if you want to know what He would do, read about Him! Read the words He said, and read what His closest followers wrote about Him. The relevant difference between Jesus and Marcus Aurelius is that Jesus is still alive and sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and lead us in truth (if you have indeed been born again of course). But after investigating further, I know why Kratzer doesn’t know what Jesus would do.
I wanted to understand better where Chris was coming from, so I sat down and read many of his other pieces. One in particular stood out to me in which he likened his “What did you expect me to do?” post to how he apparently believes the Bible was written and copied over the centuries. He said that what happened to his post as it was shared thousands of times on Facebook is the reason he doesn’t trust what the Bible says. As his post got shared, every once in a while he noticed that the people who shared it would sometimes change certain parts here and there. He went on to say that if this many changes could happen in a matter of days, then how could there not have been cases of alteration in the Bible over centuries of time?
This demonstrates an unfortunately common misunderstanding of Biblical transmission, or how the Bible was handed down over the years. I won’t address the question of whether the Bible was changed or not here, I’ve already written on that topic so I’ll just include a link to it in the recommended resources at the end of this article. I will, however, explain how Kratzer’s experience with his article being changed actually helps prove the reliability of scripture.
Chris doesn’t seem to have thought very deeply about all of the shares that his post received. Sure there are quite a few that were changed and then people probably shared the variant post without checking to make sure that it was the original, but it would be extremely easy for someone to see his name at the top of the shared post and find the original on his personal Facebook page. Not only that, if you gathered all 3600+ instances of his post that were shared, you would be able to tell which ones were copied the earliest, and which ones were later copies. If you were to do that, you would find that the earlier you look, the less variations you will find. If this doesn’t make much sense yet, here is a thought experiment that may help.
Imagine I am standing at the podium in a lecture hall full of 100 students. There is a white board behind me and each student has a paper and pen in front of them. I proceed to write a long paragraph on the whiteboard behind me and instruct the class to carefully copy every word I wrote on their papers. When all the students are done, I then erase the whiteboard and collect all of the students’ papers. The original is gone. It no longer exists. Can I recreate the original with great accuracy? I have 100 copies of my lengthy paragraph and even if a few students, maybe even 25 of them, were to have changed a part of my paragraph that they didn’t like, I would still have 75 faithful copies even if there may be spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. I could know with great confidence what was originally written on that white board.
In the thought experiment above, we can see that it is very possible to reconstruct a piece of literature with great accuracy given a multiplicity of copies. Indeed the more copies we have, the greater the accuracy. Now this experiment doesn’t take into account the copies that would be made from the first generation of copies and so on, but it is a simplified way of explaining the process of textual criticism that is used by historians to reconstruct the original words of a given ancient document. When it comes to the New Testament in particular, we have over 20,000 existing manuscripts to analyze in order to find out what the original documents said!
Circling back to the critique of “What did you expect me to do?” Chris doesn’t know what Jesus would do in any given situation because he hasn’t taken the entirety of God’s Word as truth. He believes the warm fuzzy parts about love, mercy, and forgiveness, but anything that doesn’t fit his presuppositions of what love, mercy, and forgiveness are gets tossed aside. He believes that he can deduce what Jesus would do using only the parts of scripture that he accepts, but how on Earth does he know that the parts that he accepts aren’t the parts that have been changed, if indeed the Bible has been corrupted as he claims? What method is he using to conclude that certain parts of scripture are true and others are false? Based on what I have read of his work, it seems clear to me that he is testing scripture with his own heart, and therein lies the problem. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9. Without the doctrine of biblical inspiration, everyone is left to take their best guess as to which parts of the Bible are true and which ones are false. Without biblical inspiration, or at the very least, historical accuracy, there is no telling what Jesus would do.
In rejecting much of the things that are written about Jesus, Chris is left with an incomplete picture of the person of Jesus. My advice to Chris and anyone who shared his original post is to read the scriptures in their entirety and perhaps even learn the basic principles of hermeneutics and exegesis in order to understand who Jesus is and the more you study the scriptures with these principles in place, the more you will see who Jesus is and the better you will know the answer to that age old question, “what would Jesus do?”
Recommended Resources:
400,000 Variants — Advent Christian Voices
Can We Trust the Gospels?: Williams, Peter J.: 9781433552953: Amazon.com: Books