Emulation Advice

Today, I saw a Youtube video in which emulation was simultaneously discouraged and encouraged. Emulation was encouraged in the sense of learning from others, testing their methods, and using their wisdom to improve oneself, but it was discouraged in the sense of merely copying what others are doing and comparing oneself to them. This advice makes sense when applied to art or other skills, but I wonder how well it applies to emulating Jesus Christ.

By my estimation, the encouraged form of emulation works very well when applied to Christ. We are absolutely encouraged to learn from Him, we are expressly commanded to apply His methods, and using His wisdom to improve ourselves is one of the primary purposes of our existence. So, yes, we are definitely encouraged to emulate Jesus Christ.

But what about the discouraged version of emulation? Is there anything wrong with merely copying Christ? On the surface, it doesn't seem like there would be anything wrong with blindly following Christ. After all, He followed the correct course. If we follow Him closely, we will follow the same path, even if we can't see it. But blind obedience isn't really what God wants from us, as far as I understand it. God wants us to learn and grow as individuals. We won't accomplish that by merely copying Christ. We may be able to keep the commandments that way, but we won't really progress. To accomplish God's purposes, we need to make our own decisions, not blindly copy Christ's.

It is also a bad idea to compare ourselves to Jesus Christ. While it may seem like a good benchmark, since His perfection is literally the standard we are striving to reach, I don't think it's entirely wise to set our sights that high just yet. Jesus is perfect, and we are still very, very far from perfect. If we compare ourselves to Jesus Christ, we will see how far we still have to go, how much improvement we still have to make. Gaining a measure of the gap between us may be more discouraging than informative. Once we're a little bit further along, we might begin to compare ourselves to Christ as a way of saying "what lack I yet?" But the way it stands right now, we can probably list plenty of answers to that question off the tops of our heads, and those alone will probably be enough to keep us busy for one lifetime. We can compare ourselves to Jesus Christ once we're a little bit closer to His level. In the meantime, it's probably better to just learn from Him without dwelling on how much we still have to learn.

So, yeah, I think that emulation advice is pretty solid. We should learn from great people without comparing ourselves to them, and we can adopt parts of their style without copying them completely. We can learn from Christ's example without merely copying Him or getting overwhelmed by His perfection. We'll get there eventually, but only if we learn to emulate the Savior in appropriate, responsible ways.