Lent 2023 | Week 5: Imitation

Imitation is the Real Deal

Throughout the season of Lent we have been thinking about the theme of desire. Last week we took a detour to discuss the importance of contemplation. This week we’ll look at one particular question we need most to contemplate which is, “Who am I imitating?”

Who we imitate is inextricably tied to the question of what we desire. Working off the keen insights of the French thinker, René Girard, we have seen that our desires are mimetic. Simply put, our desires mimic the desires of others. To help us answer the bewildering question, “What do I want?” we look to others to give us an answer. So when we scroll through Yelp to figure out where to eat, we filter for those restaurants not just with the highest rating, but with the most reviews. We don’t know what to eat so it helps to let others decide for us.

This happens in all phases of our lives. For better or worse, it is just how we are wired. At its best, mimetic desire is what makes it possible for the development and flourishing of human cultures. It is what allows us to learn to speak a language, to come to agree on basic values that hold us together and to live toward general goals that we hold in common. At its worst, mimetic desire turns us against one another. It fragments us into hostile rivalries, turning our neighbor into an enemy to be overcome because we know they want what we want and they know we what we want they want. If this kind of enmity is not held in check, jealousy and envy can quickly turn into violent aggression.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we want to recognize that we often look to models to help us navigate the question, “What do I want?”. When we are born, our parents are our primary models. And then in school, our teachers become models for us. As we grow up, different people come into our lives like coaches, counsellors, advisers – all of whom we may call mentors – who guide and shape our desires in various facets of our lives.

Advertisers know we are always in search of models and they are more than happy to provide us with some. And of course, with the rise of the internet, we now have a new category of model – social media influencers. It is big business to help steer or manipulate our desires in certain directions.

The point is not to say we should not have models. As we said, for better or worse, our desires are mimetic and therefore, we are drawn to models. So the question is not whether we will imitate someone. Rather, the question is, “Who to imitate?”

As we head toward Holy Week and Good Friday, we want to start considering what all this talk about desire has to do with Jesus’ life in general, and his death on a cross in particular.

One way to see Jesus’ life is to receive it as a model. Jesus is our exemplary model. The human model par excellence. Jesus, in short, is God’s answer to the question, “What do I want?”.

You don’t know what to want?

Try Jesus. I think he may have more followers than Justin Bieber.

Show Me What I’m Looking For

One of my favorite songs, the title of which, I think, is one of the best prayers we can pray. Given our time and place, in which we are bombarded with desire upon desire placed on top of desire and there are more models than we know what to do with, it is not a bad idea to pray this simple prayer daily, “Show me what I’m looking for, oh Lord.”

Interestingly enough, as I was looking up this song, the YouTube algorithm suggested a song I’ve never heard of entitled the American Dream by the Federal Empire. The song automatically played and well, turns out, it captures to a “T” all that we’ve been talking about in terms of desire gone amuck. Check it out:

Faith and Imitation, Imitation and Faith

Christianity is a believing and a very particular kind of existing corresponding to it—imitation. We can put faith first and imitation second, inasmuch as it is necessary for me to have faith in that which I am to imitate. But we must also put imitation first and faith second. I must, by some action, be marked in some measure by conformity to Christ, and thus collide with the world. Without some kind of situational tension, there is no real opportunity of becoming a believer.

— Søren Kierkegaard

This is a wonderful quote by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on the relationship between faith and imitation. I think we intuitively get what it means that imitation follows faith. As we have been saying, we must have faith in and desire that which we are to imitate. But what would it meant for imitation to precede faith? Kierkegaard talks about the need for faith to “collide with the world.”

• What do you think Kierkegaard means when he says, “Without some kind of situational tension, there is no real opportunity of becoming a believer”?

Scripture

It might help to think of Kierkegaard’s quote in terms of the Scripture passage we have been looking at throughout Lent: Matthew 20:20-28

As we looked at last week, James and John, ask for these positions of power next to Jesus even after hearing Jesus teach them about how actually things work in God’s kingdom. Namely, that the last will be first and the first will be last.

And yet they still seek to be first.

What Jesus does in response to their question is to present them with a “situational tension” (in verse 25), where what James and John believe (but not yet truly) is set to collide with the way the world works. Jesus means to provide for James and John, as Kierkegaard puts it, the opportunity of becoming true believers.

Sometimes we don’t know what we believe until we our imitation of Jesus collides with the world. It is only in those moments of collision that we are able to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a believer.

• What are some moments in your life where imitation to Jesus caused you to “collide with the world”?
• Would you say it helped or hindered your belief in Jesus?