It's amazing the specific details we automatically imitate.

After getting baptized at 13 years old, I began to take communion with the adults of the church. As simple as it seems to eat a piece of cracker and sip some juice, I wanted to do it right. So I watched my dad and copied him.

When he partook of the Lord's Supper, he'd bow and pray his head after each element. So I too offered a personal prayer myself. Easy enough. But in my close examination of my dad's communion-taking method that he honed as a life long Christian, I noticed he never drank all the grape juice in the mini-cup. So I too made it a specific practice to not finish off the juice when it was my turn to swig a small plastic cup of imitation wine. I intentionally left a thin layer of grape juice in the cup every time.

Fast forward to the future and I learned that this isn't some written rule of communion. I mean, I guess if you really want to be technical the disciples at the Last Supper were sharing a cup so they all left some juice behind. Still, somehow I got it in my head that this was the way to drink the cup because that's what I saw my dad did. Even in youth group I remember the teacher asked us about how we take communion and I confidently showed off how holy I am because I don't guzzle down the Blood of Jesus.

Imitation is an integral part of Christianity that we can't take for granted. Jesus is of course the Prime Example, the one we are all trying to mimic. As we say sometimes "What Would Jesus Do?" And though that's not actually a Scripture (shocking, right?) it's a pretty good summation of our attitude toward the Son of God.

The trouble we Christians get into is that we often imitate someone or something else rather than Jesus and then it completely messes us up. The recent book Jesus and John Wayne Kristin Kobes Du Mez that's been storming the evangelical world reveals that many American Christians have mistaken Christian manhood for a tough gruff John Wayne gunslinger type and not the gentle Jesus who advocated turning the other cheek.

Growing up, T.V. and movies admittedly had lots of affects on my brother and I. What we saw on the screen got our gears turning. Thus, watching an action movie would mean you could expect homespun sound effects and fake karate moves once the credits rolled. My brother and I, born story creators, would often brainstorm a movie idea of our own that sounded suspiciously exactly like the movie we just watched with, like, three differences tops.

There was even a phase in life where my mom accused my brother of acting like Zack from the show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. The jury's still out on that one, but it seems plausible that we internalize and imitate that which we see in the world. It's easy to imitate all the wrong things because we are much more familiar with all the wrong things.

Alright so we know we have to imitate Jesus. But that's hard. Jesus lived 2,000 years ago in a different world. Sometimes asking "What would Jesus do?" is an impossible question because who knows what Jesus would do in a world of instant access to the planet's entire scope of knowledge all from a slab in your pocket!

However, the apostle Paul gives a solution in an almost-throwaway line in 1 Corinthians 11:1. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." For the Corinthians who never met Jesus (and possible hadn't read the Gospel accounts), they might have a hard time figuring out what Jesus was like. Paul says "I'll show you." Paul is their best representation of Jesus. Paul is not a replacement for Jesus; Paul will mess up. But Paul's life is going to help them know Jesus better.

We can't imitate Paul either because Paul isn't alive today. But I know for a fact that their are Christ stand-ins all around us. There are those people who we can just tell have a solid relationship with Christ, who just have the Spirit flowing in them. These are the people we need to seek out and imitate. Find these stellar Christians and copy them. Be a copycat for Christ!

As we imitate the Saints that are further along in our journey, hopefully we are modeling Christ for others behind us on the journey to imitate. Christianity is a religion of multiplication. We copy those before us, others copy us, and then still others copy those that copied us. That's discipleship in a nutshell. That's what Christianity is all about.

But make sure you are imitating the right things. Imitate Jesus by imitating those that know him best and then the faith will never die.

Don't guzzle that grape juice,

Jake Doberenz