Misusing "What Would Jesus Do?"

A commenter recently responded to my last post by asking the noble question “What Would Jesus Do?” The question, of course, is one that Christians should ask themselves continuously. But Christ, of course, is not available to disentangle thorny political topics. Far too often, the implied answer to “What Would Jesus Do” is “Jesus would do whatever I want, because He supported X ideal.”

In the case of the particular post I referenced earlier, the commenter asked the question when I attacked the idea of women in the military. He concluded: “I do not think that he would condemn the new policy as you have,” and questioned "could not both genders contribute on the battlefield?" 
This would be a fair point – provided that he or she backed up his or her arguments with evidence that supported this point. But aside from one quote from an official that the Pentagon "expects to have gender-neutral standards for combat jobs," this evidence was not offered. Since the military already lowers physical standards to accommodate women, this claim should be greeted with some cynicism.

Bad policy implemented to achieve desirable ends is still bad policy. It does no service to women to “raise them up” by diluting standards for service, or by throwing away prudence for the sake of achieving desirable ends.

This method of argument is easily abused. After all, Jesus clearly upholds women, and demands justice for the poor. Thus, people could (and do) argue that Jesus would clearly accept abortion, because surely He would agree with “helping women.” Jesus would support redistributive taxation, because he demands justice for the poor. And so on and so forth.

Before asking ourselves the question “What Would Jesus Do?,” let us consider how well we truly understand the person of Jesus Christ before claiming His approval. Let us also consider how logical our position is.