Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. (Ephesians 5:1)I remember when I was in my mid teens and went to the store for something. I took my little three year old nephew. He thought I was great and tried to be like me. He even tried to match his little three year old strides to my almost six foot ones.
I had not had anyone imitate me before and it pleased me.
Someone once said, you are what you eat. In the same way, you are who your friends are. You are going to be like those you admire.
If you admire movie stars, you will want to be like them. That generally leads to a life of debauchery and immorality. It is hard to find a movie star or entertainment figure of any kind who has not been married multiple times and who doesn’t have a train wreck of a life.
The same with sports figures or otherwise. They may do well in one thing or another, but many times their lives are wrong. One of our most loved sports figures, a known golfer, recently has had this come to light. While people admired him and put him up as a Christian role model, he was involved with prostitutes to a degree that was amazing.
When I was in seminary, the head of the school was a strong dynamic figure. After a while, you would notice that the preacher boys (me included) would move their hands like his or furrow their brow like he did. We admired him so we imitated him.
The problem with imitating people, though, is that they have problems. Movie stars, sports figures, politicians – all have obvious flaws. Even my seminary head had some strong flaws. For one thing, he was exceedingly closed minded on subjects he felt he had already made up his mind on.
On the other hand, if you admire things of God, you will want to be like him. Only his things will last and bring any lasting joy. Like children admire a parent, you do best to admire and imitate God.
And as the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1: And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ. He didn’t say just imitate me, but imitate me as I imitate him who is worth imitating.
There is nothing wrong with role models, but we have to realize that they are flawed. Only God and only the man his Son have the true way to live.
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