Those who are parents, which is the case of the vast majority of people in the world, notice something in their children, that they try to copy them in everything, intrinsically, subconsciously, but even consciously when they pass the age of infancy and early childhood, and parents love that.
Role models are important because there is much easier to copy someone visually than following instructions, especially at an early age. For this reason, children are programmed to copy, imitate and emulate, especially those around them, those who interact with them, which is first and foremost parents, and maybe their siblings and friends.
At the same time, children naturally love and admire perfection. We all love something which is perfect, beautiful, amazing, ideal, and excellent. A talented soccer player is admired by millions, not to say, billions of people around the world. A famous actor, who performs the role of a hero, sets the trend for millions of others. There is no blame on that because we all love perfection.
Besides, copying others is much efficient from a manufacturing point of view because our resources, time, and energy are limited in this world. If we had to make a new tool in a way that we had to rediscover it each and every time, in other words, without copying a prototype, human civilization would have remained in the stone age forever.
When it comes to human behavior, what is considered good or bad, what qualities one should gain and acquire in order to come closer to perfection, those around us are not necessary the best example. Children are programmed to copy their parents, and that’s necessary at the beginning of their life, but they are not perfect. After all, those around us whom we copy and emulate, they themselves have copied others before, so the set of traits and moral values that we can possibly copy from others have reached us through a process of copying, which is not a perfect process. In addition, people learn bad habits as well as they reflect in their character specific problems that they’ve gone through in their lives.
Therefore, if we copy our parents – our main role model, we are going to replicate their negative aspects. So, parents are not that perfect prototype that we can copy them on everything. In fact, this is similar to making a new car by replicating an old and broken one.
So, while children temporarily need a person to follow until they mature mentally, they eventually would need a prototype to emulate in order to reach perfection, a prototype which is not polluted by their own life’s problems. This makes sense in manufacturing process, and this would perfectly make sense in our social life.
And that’s exactly one of the roles of a prophet of God, to represent perfection so people can follow him. In order to reach perfection of character and personality, that cannot be achieved by copying parents, but by emulating a prophet of God.
Sabri Lushi
