Looking Like Jesus
This is a little illustration I developed for my Bible class a few years ago. I used it again with my 7th and 8th grade students this week.
I begin by choosing one student volunteer to serve as a model. I have them stand far away from the rest of the class. In this most recent Bible class, I had our model stand at one of the end of the main hallway of our school, and the rest of the class stood at the other end of the hallway. I instructed them to draw our model, drawing only what they could see of him.
Most of the drawings ended up looking more or less like this:
I asked the students how well their drawing lined up with what they saw of the model. Most felt that their drawings were pretty close to what they could see.
Then we moved closer to our model. He was only five or six feet away and everyone could see him clearly. Once again, I had them draw the model, again drawing what they could see. Here the students’ artistic limitations really began to show. Those who weren’t naturally gifted artists, had a hard time drawing a good quality representation of the model. I asked the students to compare their drawings with the model, and they all agreed that their drawings did not look very much like the model at all.
For the final part of the activity, I had the students show the drawings to our principal, Mrs. Arthurs, and asked her to identify the student they’d drawn, looking at both drawings. In every case, Mrs. Arthurs could not identify the student based on the first drawing (the one that the students agreed was “pretty good.”), and in almost every case she recognized the student in the second drawing (the one from when we were closer that the students felt was a poor likeness) right away.
The lesson? This is what it’s like as we grow in Christ. When we are far away from Him, we tend to look at ourselves and look at Him, and think we’re pretty much the same. “I’m a pretty good person,” we say. However, as we grow closer to Jesus, and see more of his matchless love and His unparalleled goodness, the more we realize how much we fall short of that Ideal. We realize that we’ve got a long way to go to “look like Him” and that we don’t have the skills or talents to do it in our own strength. At the same time, though, as we grow closer to Jesus, we do resemble him more, as clumsy as our “drawings” may be, and others looking at our lives will see the resemblance between us and Jesus.
The irony is that the closer we are to Jesus, the more we look like Him, but the less likely we are to know that we look like Him.
I begin by choosing one student volunteer to serve as a model. I have them stand far away from the rest of the class. In this most recent Bible class, I had our model stand at one of the end of the main hallway of our school, and the rest of the class stood at the other end of the hallway. I instructed them to draw our model, drawing only what they could see of him.
Most of the drawings ended up looking more or less like this:
I asked the students how well their drawing lined up with what they saw of the model. Most felt that their drawings were pretty close to what they could see.
Then we moved closer to our model. He was only five or six feet away and everyone could see him clearly. Once again, I had them draw the model, again drawing what they could see. Here the students’ artistic limitations really began to show. Those who weren’t naturally gifted artists, had a hard time drawing a good quality representation of the model. I asked the students to compare their drawings with the model, and they all agreed that their drawings did not look very much like the model at all.
For the final part of the activity, I had the students show the drawings to our principal, Mrs. Arthurs, and asked her to identify the student they’d drawn, looking at both drawings. In every case, Mrs. Arthurs could not identify the student based on the first drawing (the one that the students agreed was “pretty good.”), and in almost every case she recognized the student in the second drawing (the one from when we were closer that the students felt was a poor likeness) right away.
The lesson? This is what it’s like as we grow in Christ. When we are far away from Him, we tend to look at ourselves and look at Him, and think we’re pretty much the same. “I’m a pretty good person,” we say. However, as we grow closer to Jesus, and see more of his matchless love and His unparalleled goodness, the more we realize how much we fall short of that Ideal. We realize that we’ve got a long way to go to “look like Him” and that we don’t have the skills or talents to do it in our own strength. At the same time, though, as we grow closer to Jesus, we do resemble him more, as clumsy as our “drawings” may be, and others looking at our lives will see the resemblance between us and Jesus.
The irony is that the closer we are to Jesus, the more we look like Him, but the less likely we are to know that we look like Him.
posted by Sean at 1:16 PM
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