Commerce Township — It became fashionable in the 1990s, and even today, when considering the right or wrong moral path, to ask, “What would Jesus do?”

For Tom Nash, the question has good intentions, but doesn’t go quite far enough. That’s because we don’t have to imagine what Jesus would do in a given situation, he says. We have all the information God intended.

“In recent decades, there’s that catchy phrase, ‘What would Jesus do?’ for people to guide their moral lives,” said Nash, a former theological adviser for EWTN and current speaker for Catholic Answers. “And my thought was, if we want to know what Jesus would do in the present day, we need to know what he did 2,000 years ago in his earthly ministry.”

Answering that question is the goal of Nash’s new book, “What Did Jesus Do?: The Biblical Roots of the Catholic Church,” published by Incarnate Word Media.

Growing up in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Nash attended St. Mary’s of Redford School in Detroit before moving to Ann Arbor and graduating from Fr. Gabriel Richard High School. After working for EWTN and other Catholic media entities, he returned to the area and currently resides in Commerce Township.

Nash’s book — his second after “The Biblical Roots of the Mass” (2015, Sophia Institute Press) — is written both for novices and theologically minded individuals and touches on a wide range of topics, including the Eucharist, the Church’s magisterium and the lives of the saints, illustrating how each Catholic tradition and teaching comes directly from the words and actions of Christ.

One of the main things Jesus did, Nash argues, is to found a timeless Church that is the pillar and bulwark of truth for all generations.

“If he founded the Church as his instrument of worldwide salvation and life-transforming love, then we need to be paying attention to it,” Nash said. “I tried to time it with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation as a charitable Catholic response, but it has a timeless character to it because the Church’s mission is perennial, to make disciples of all nations.”

Today, finding the true Jesus can be difficult as people wander through a jungle of scandals, hard truths and other stumbling blocks — some, like the Reformation, centuries in the making. That’s why it’s so important to get back to Scripture and rediscover what Christ intended for His Church, Nash said.

“In the last couple of decades, with the decline of societal morals and increasing skepticism and atheism, I wanted to be able to respond to these charges,” Nash said. “Jesus is a historical person, but the fact is he founded a Church and sustained it for 2,000 years. If the Church were merely a human institution, we would have been out of business centuries ago — both from persecutions from without and the scandals from within.”

Nash said he wants his book to show that “it does make sense to live the Catholic faith” in 2018 and beyond.

“When we see the lives of the saints and people taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and they not only survive in their mission, but thrive and have a joyful disposition and are contagiously Catholic, it is an impressive witness,” Nash said.

The saints — Blessed Solanus Casey among them, Nash said — are living examples not only of the fact that God continues to move in today’s world, but that it is possible to live according to the principles laid out by Jesus.

Nash said one of his favorite saints is St. Damien of Molokai, who spent years in Hawaii living among lepers and ministering to their needs out of sheer love and selflessness.

“I’m not saying that atheists can’t do good work, but I don’t see how an atheist would survive and thrive and transform that leper colony like Damien of Molokai did,” Nash said.

Part of Nash’s book is dedicated to combating the idea that the saints are somehow competitors with God, rather than collaborators.

“Fr. George Rutler, who’s based in New York, once said the reason the saints are so ignored is that they are evidence that it’s all true,” Nash said.

Nash, who attended the beatification Mass of Blessed Solanus in November at Ford Field, said just like football stadiums put up banners honoring athletic heroes, the Church honors its heroes who point beyond themselves to a greater reality, giving witness to the truth of Jesus’ claims.

“When we speak of unleashing the Gospel, we think of somebody like Blessed Solanus and all he did and the fruit he bore in his life,” Nash said. “There’s something about the saints that reminds us of what’s most important.”