Imitate and Grow

(Philippians 3:17)

Generally speaking, most people consider that to imitate something or someone is to be a fake. They consider an imitation to be something less than the original.

But if you think about it a little more, imitation is necessary. It is by imitation that we learn and grow and that is the point of this scripture today.

Imitation is not being false or fake. It is a necessary skill that we all learn as children and should not be shunned as adults. There are some excellent examples of imitation that prove this to be true, and it is also a good thing for Christians to learn to help them grow in the Lord.

Post-war Japan

One of the greatest examples of imitating to learn and grow can be seen in the rebuilding of Japan after the second world war.

Japan was completely decimated during the war. It was basically razed to the ground. They had no natural resources and the morale of the Japanese people had sunk to never before seen levels of gloom.

America came in after the war to aid them in rebuilding their economy, and in particular were people like Joseph Juran and W.Edwards Deming, who were the fathers of the quality improvement movement and who taught the Japanese a new way of doing things.

When I was a child, if you saw something with the words “Made in Japan” written on it, it immediately meant it was junk. They produced a lot of junk and rubbish in the 1950’s and early 1960’s until the works of Juran and Deming took hold in the Japanese manufacturing plants.

The essence of what they were doing in Japan is they were imitating the practices and processes for manufacturing that were used in the west. They copied and imitated American and English processes and of course made a lot of mistakes until they learned.

The Japanese were renowned in those years as copycat producers. They imitated everything from the west but were not as good as those they copied.

That is, until the later years of the 1960’s. Using the techniques they learned from the likes of Juran and Deming, as well as many others including their own quality gurus, they transformed their manufacturing to the point where today if you see “Made in Japan” it means unsurpassed quality and excellence.

They were copycats and imitators not for the purpose of being cheap imitations, but to learn and grow. And they did grow, even surpassing those whom they had originally copied from and they began teaching their methods to the western world.

This is an excellent example of copying to learn and grow. But there is a still more basic example that we have all been through and witnessed ourselves.

Babies and Children

If you have children, stop and consider how they learn to do anything. They learn to walk and talk through a process of watching and copying others.

Young children are sponges that soak up knowledge through copying so that they can grow and learn.

Babies begin to talk by copying and imitating words spoken to them, even before they understand what those words might mean. They learn a word here or there, then they learn how to put together a few words at a time, then they progress to full sentences and so on, through imitating their parents and those they come into contact with.

Children are born as imitators and copycats, and it’s a good thing that they are otherwise they would never learn and grow.

So when we think of imitating others, especially the behaviour of others, we need to reconsider the normal thought processes that imitation is bad or false and recognise that in many cases it is not only a good thing, but it is necessary to learn and grow.

And this is especially the case with Christians.

Imitate and Grow

When we come to Christ we begin our walk with Him as babes. We know very little and don’t know what we need to know or do or what we must learn to become Christ-like.

This is why this scripture today is both enlightening and important. It says:

17 Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us. (Philippians 3:17)

We imitate others and especially those who have been Christians for a long time because they are, or should be a good example. Those who have been Christians for some time have learned what is important. They have gained insight and experience into what it means to be a Christian and how a Christian should behave.

Paul understood this and the need for imitating good behaviours because that is how we learn.

Another important thing that we take from the Japanese example is that after a period of imitating and copying the processes of manufacturing, they understood it and became better at it. They were no longer imitating but were leading the way. They had learned and understood and so their activities ceased to be an imitation and became the way they did things.

It’s the same with Christians. As a Christian imitates another person, while it may seem fake to them for a while, at some point they begin to do naturally whatever it was they are imitating. So they are no longer an imitator but a practitioner of whatever it was they were copying.

It’s basically the same way that habits are formed. When you do something repeatedly for a while, eventually it becomes a habit and you naturally do it without thinking.

Consider how a person learns to drive a car. They have to think about every thing they do when they are learning: when to engage the clutch, when to change gears, when to brake or accelerate, when to watch for vehicles pulling from the kerb or out of a driveway, and so on. They have a thousand things going on and have to think about all of them at the same time. But after a while, with plenty of practice under their belt, these things become habits and they no longer consciously think about them.

It’s the same for Christians. As we imitate, we learn and develop new habits and processes based upon the word of Christ. As we watch and imitate others, we learn these skills and behaviours, and as we continue to imitate, in time they become a habit and our natural response.

We have a book given to us by God, the Bible, which has many, many examples in it of the right ways to think and behave. These are the things we need to imitate as we study and learn the ways of the Lord. So let us use the Bible as a book of examples and imitate the good patterns that have been laid down by Christ and His early disciples, and so imitate and grow in Jesus Christ.

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