Imitation is the sincerest form of growth
Every day when Norah gets home from school she wants to play a game called…school. Each family member gets a role. Norah is one of the teachers, she tells Brittany to play the other. I’m supposed to be the director of the school so I sit in the “office” and step in to handle any behavior problems among the children (the children are Norah’s stuffed animals). Frequently I’m tasked with putting a stuffed dinosaur in time out and instructing him in how to use “gentle hands.”
Why am I telling you this? Just sit tight. It will all become clear.
Kids imitate what they know. I’m sure there are fancy explanations for this. I don’t think the explanation is all that important- the point is that it is quite intuitive to learn to understand our world through exploring what we see day in and day out.
When Norah plays the role of one of her teachers she is stern (but still caring). When she plays the role of the other teacher, she is quiet and gentle. She picks up on these nuances of personality and acts accordingly. She imitates. And she doesn’t even know that she’s doing it.
She doesn’t know she’s doing it because it is so intuitive. She’s been doing it since she was a baby. We’ve all been doing it since we were babies. We imitate words, gestures, the motion of walking, running, swimming. Shooting a basketball, throwing, drawing, writing, and so on. Norah imitates the sound of her parents’ yelling. Which we do. And, when we play “night night,” she also imitates the back rub I give her every night as I tuck her in (thankfully there’s at least one good thing she can imitate).
As we get older imitate ideas and values. First, those of our parents. Then, those of our other teachers. We imitate the behaviors of our friends. This isn’t because we have defective personalities it’s simply because humans are social and look to others for cues.
As it turns out, this is also, roughly, the instruction we’re given on how to learn how to live as faithful people. We are to imitate Christ (the version below uses “adopt the attitude” instead of “imitate”). When you read the following verses…what specifically do you think we’re called to imitate?
Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God highly honored him and gave him a name above all names, so that at the name of Jesus everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my loved ones, just as you always obey me, not just when I am present but now even more while I am away, carry out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out his good purposes.
~ 2 Philippians 2:5-13, CEB
The idea that we would imitate Christ isn’t such a shocking thing. We do this in community, and this is the process of being re-parented or re-shaped, re-formed, or some such word like that. We learn to take cues both from who we imagine Jesus to be from reading scripture as well as the people around us who share that value, that way of seeing.
There’s a few traits mentioned here specifically for us to imitate. Humility, service, sacrifice. A willingness to prioritize others over ourselves. The list is probably longer, maybe even long enough that we won’t be able to focus on all of them. And ultimately it’s up to you which ones you focus on. Whatever the case may be, the guidepost is Christ’s life- a life that perfectly embodied the values of God, lived in the flesh.
And so, in closing, I’ll ask you: What’s one trait of Jesus’ that you think you’d like to imitate in your life?
