Who Do You Resemble?

Everybody’s always being compared to someone else. They look like so-in-so, that band sounds like this band, this tastes like chicken, etc. Hopefully the comparisons are positive, if you’re the one being “compared.” In fact, now you can find out who you write like.

Super-blogger Tim Challies pointed to a web site called I Write Like, where you can enter some text from your writing (blog, journal, etc.), and it will be analyzed to tell you what famous writer you write like. Based on word choice, grammar, etc. it tells you what writer you most resemble.

Since my daughters are budding writers, this caught my attention. I entered some chapters from our oldest girl’s “novel” (The Tale of Ander Collins, which you can read here, along with other stories and poetry). The first chapter said she wrote like Leo Tolstoy. Heady stuff. Of course, the next chapter said Chuck Palahniuk, and being somewhat illiterate I have no idea who that is (sorry, Chuck). My daughter then copied the entire text of her novel into the analyzer and it went back to Tolstoy. Makes a dad proud. Interestingly, she then went and looked up Tolstoy and read that he wrote like Dickens, so…

Not to be left out, I entered several blog posts and came back with various comparisons. Each post was different, but the name James Joyce came up more than once. (Hmmmm….) Then, for extra fun I started entering the full texts of a few recent sermons.

The first sermon came back as Daniel Defoe. Must have had some illustrations about being lost on a desert island or something. In fact, a couple of the sermons came back as Defoe. Then, to my horror (pun intended) one sermon came back compared to H. P. Lovecraft. Eewww! Must have been a hellfire and brimstone sermon.

So here’s the point (aren’t you glad there is one?!). If we could place our lives in a life-analyzer, who would it tell us that our lives look like? I’ve been studying Luke chapter 3 lately, looking at the ministry of John the Baptist. Luke tells us that because of his life and preaching, people were beginning to “question in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ.” (Luke 3:15, ESV)

What was it they saw in his life that gave them such Messianic hope? And what is it that people see in us as they question in their hearts concerning us? We may claim the name of Jesus, but do people see Jesus in us, or do they see the world? Do we live like Christ, does our language imitate Him, do our actions reflect Him, do our habits resemble His? Or would the life-analyzer come back and tell us that based on our words and actions, we live like every other worldly sinner on the planet.

The interesting thing about the writing analyzer is that I put in a bunch of stuff that I had already written. It’s just who I am. I wasn’t consciously thinking about a writing comparison when I did it. Likewise, when people look at us on a daily basis, they just see what is naturally coming out of us. So what do they see? Not on Sundays when we’re trying to be good, but daily as we live and work. Who do you resemble?

The Apostle Paul tells us to imitate him, but only insofar as he is imitating Christ. So our ultimate comparison is not Paul, or John the Baptist, or Spurgeon, or Edwards, or Luther, or Piper, or whoever. People should look at us and see Christ. The highest compliment a child of God could receive when our lives are placed in anyone’s life-analyzer, is to hear the words: You look just like your Father. Do people see that in us? Who do you resemble?

(PS- just for fun I put the text of this post in the analyzer. It’s says this post resembles science fiction writer and blogging activist Cory Doctorow. {Thanks Widipedia} Not sure if either of us should be complimented or insulted, but there you have it)