The letters WWJD, what would Jesus do, spread across bracelets and t-shirts through the 1990s until the phrase became so common it risked becoming background noise. The question itself is older and more specific in origin than the merchandise suggests.
The movement traces to 1989, when the youth group at Calvary Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan, studied Charles Sheldons 1896 novel In His Steps, in which a congregation commits to asking what Jesus would do before every decision for a year. The bracelets came later, but the underlying discipline, pausing before action to genuinely ask the question rather than assuming the answer, is what the novel was actually proposing.
Overexposure eventually flattened the phrase into a slogan, which is a real loss, because the question underneath it is not simple once taken seriously. Jesus himself gave the clearest starting point: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself, the two commandments he called the greatest. Answering what Jesus would do in a specific situation requires more than the slogan; it requires actually knowing what he did, which means reading the Gospels rather than reciting four letters.
The fad may have passed, but the discipline behind it, checking an instinct against Jesus own recorded life before acting on it, holds up better than the bracelet did. Guessing at what Jesus might do without knowing what he actually did is just projection wearing a Christian label.
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