I ran into Jesus Christ over the weekend and mentioned that it must be pretty cool that you see “WWJD” on bumper stickers all over the world.

“I mean, you’ve been dead for something like two thousand and seven years, and yet all these people have ‘What Would Jesus Do’ on their cars. Isn’t that nice?”

“I hate those things,” Jesus replied.

“What? Why?”

“Let me tell you what Jesus would do. Jesus would not have a bumper sticker on the back of his car. They’re tacky. And particularly on nice cars they really mess with the finish.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s a good point.”

“Besides, I wouldn’t even be driving a car.  Hello, global warming?”

“Well, what about one of those cute bracelets?”

“Sure, I’d love to wear a bracelet.  If I was a sixteen-year old girl in the year 1955.  No. Tacky.”

“T-shirt?”

“Interferes with the whole flowing gown look.”

“Okay, so what you’re saying is, Jesus would not actually approve of the whole ‘WWJD’ franchise in any way, shape, or form.”

“Bingo. People are supposed to listen to their own hearts and act on their own best instincts, not try to second guess mine.”

“Oh. Cool, well, thanks for clearing that up.”

“No problem, Greg.”

He started to disappear in a puff of divine smoke, but I shouted “Wait!  Since I’ve got you here and all, can you tell me what Jesus really would do?”

He coughed and waved some of the smoke away. “Well, for starters, you in particular might work on cultivating your inner spirit and sense of kindness and compassion towards others instead of surfing inane blogs all the time.  Otherwise your soul may suffer.  Let me tell you: if you go to Mapquest.com and click ‘Driving Directions’ and enter your own name as the starting address and ‘HELL’ as the destination, you may be surprised to find out how short the distance really is, excluding potential traffic issues or unexpected delays.”

“Right.  Okay, thanks Jesus.”

I turned to walk away, but he stopped me.

“Hey, listen, let me ask you something.  What exactly was so hard about the Golden Rule, anyway? No one seems to understand it.  ‘Do unto others as you’d have them do to you’ means not invading countries, not discriminating against people who are different than you, and not killing people in my name.  Unless you people really like all those things done to you, in which case, brother, you’ve got issues. I mean, I called it a ‘golden rule’ to sort of draw attention to the fact that it was pretty important, but it seems to be more of an afterthought?”

It took me a second to realize that he hadn’t asked a question, but rather made a statement. Who suspected that Jesus was an uptalker?

“Maybe you could have called it a Platinum Rule,” I suggested.  “Or maybe used funny colored font.  Or use both capped and non-capped letters, e.g. GoLdEn RuLe.  Kids today love that stuff.”

He considered this. “Those are pretty good ideas,” he admitted.  “I wish I had thought of them a few millennium ago.  Oh well—live and learn.  Or rather, live, die, be resurrected, and learn, although that sounds a little clunky.”

He faded out of view, and I quickly shouted after him: “Also, you could have spruced up some of your big speeches.  For example, when you gave the Sermon on the Mount, instead of launching right into ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ you could have started it out with ‘Jesus in HIZZZ-OUSE’!”

But he was already gone, which was for the best. It’s not good form to make people feel bad about their mistakes after the fact.  That’s definitely not WJWD.