Guest post by Lucas Dorminy
Be Imitators, Be Children
To imitate, according to the bible, is simply to follow. Jesus tells His disciples to follow Him, and in doing so His disciples did as He did. The disciples, imitating Christ, performed works of mercy (healing, feeding, etc.), and it is always the case that imitation necessarily includes works or acts. As Aristotle put it when speaking of “Poetic imitation”, the objects of our imitation are “men in action“. You must have an object that does something in order to imitate, that is to behave in a similar way. This seems to be tediously simple, does it not? Of course, imitation is acting as or following the object of our imitation, but is imitation in the Bible just a mindless mimicking of actions? When it comes to following Jesus, it is not.
In fact, as Christians, we must receive the ability to imitate Christ before we can act upon that imitation. The disciples, for example, received authority and blessing from Jesus before they could perform miracles that He had performed (Matt. 10:1, John 20:21-23). We must be chosen and given authority for the task. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (20th century Christian, social philosopher) argued that “Imitation of Christ” is the possession of “Christ’s acquired faculty”, that is to say, the possession of the Spirit. It was the Spirit who empowered the disciples to imitate Christ wherever they went, and it is the same with us today. Imitation, according to the Bible, is the Spirit-empowered following of Jesus Christ.
What sparked my interest in the idea of imitation was an email I received that contained an essay on the status of children within the Church. One of the arguments, or warnings, provided in support of a later age for the administration of baptism was that children often want to please their parents by imitating the faith of their parents without actually possessing it themselves. According to this essay, the innate action of child-like imitation was to be viewed skeptically rather than embraced as a natural response of faith in Christ. Now, this assumes a lot about faith (cognitive maturity being necessary to receive faith being one of the assumptions), but it seems to me that a child’s natural imitation of his or her parents actually assumes faith in the child. That’s what a disciple does, he or she follows.
“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” – 1 Cor. 11:1
Following parents in the Faith is really an act of faith itself. Would anyone accuse an adult of insincerity if they imitated Paul as Paul imitated Christ? Of course not, because it is commanded in Scripture. It is also commanded of children, and our God speaks to us as a Father to His children. In the book of Ephesians, Paul counts children among the “saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus” (1:1). In chapter five, he goes on to state, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children”, and he then speaks directly to children in the church in order to exhort them to “obey [their] parents in the Lord” (6:1). If children in the church are saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, it makes sense that Paul would exhort adults to imitate God as little children imitate their parents. Obey God as your children obey you.
Even more, King David sings in Psalm 22:9-10:
“But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
I was cast upon You from birth.
From My mother’s womb
You have been My God.”
David was made to have faith in God while on his mother’s breasts (through an act with the parent), and from the womb Yahweh was David’s God. All of Israel sang this song together and believed it of themselves. Even a covenant child’s act of nursing is counted as an act of faith in God! David trusted God for nourishment through his mother, and the same acts of faith are seen in our children when they trust us in imitating us. Imitation is an act of faith.
Our little ones, baptized into the body of Christ and possessing all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, act in accordance with the faith they received when they lift up their little arms to mimic their parents on Sundays, clasp their one-year-old hands in prayer, scream when the congregation says “Amen”, or even giggle at the sight of a bottle from their mother. We are relational beings; we respond to and imitate those around us. This isn’t a design flaw, but a feature. As said elsewhere by the social philosopher quoted above, “’I’ is the last pronoun a child learns to use.” We were born trusting, relating to, and communing with each other. We were made to imitate.
In short, if we are to view our children’s imitation as just mindless aping rather than natural acts of a present faith, then an adult imitating God like a child would not be an act of faith, and we should look at every disciple (no matter how small they may be) with skepticism. But our covenant children are children of the Faith, children of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we stifle their acts or don’t believe their imitation is sincere, we misunderstand the definition of imitation. We tell them that they are not God’s children. We tell them that they cannot be one of us until they are old enough to be taken seriously. This isn’t how God treats our imitation of Him. No, He sings over us with joy (Zeph. 3:17) and is pleased at the mimicking sounds of our little voices. Be imitators of God. In other words, be children of God.
