Be Careful What You Imitate

In the late 1990s, aspiring actor and writer Johnny Knoxville had moved from Knoxville, Tennessee to Los Angeles, California, and landed work in commercials in order to support his wife and infant daughter. Among his ideas was one to produce an article that involved testing various self-defense equipment on himself.

In 1996, Knoxville was contacted by Big Brother, a skateboarding magazine for which Jeff Tremaine was an editor, and convinced Knoxville to do the stunt and film it. The stunt featured Knoxville testing out pepper spray, a stun gun, a taser, and a .38 caliber gun with a bulletproof vest.

Eventually this led to a TV stunt and prank show on MTV in the fall of the year 2000, and was given the name, Jackass (that seems appropriate). But a year later, Knoxville announced that the series would end after its third season aired because of discontent with MTV and the censors, who, from the start of season two, increasingly gave notes regarding what the show could and could not depict. Maybe someone was getting some sense.

At the time of its first broadcast in 2000, Jackass frequently featured warnings and disclaimers noting that the stunts performed were very dangerous and should not be imitated, and also advised viewers that any stunt video footage sent to the production company would not be opened or viewed. Such warnings not only appeared before and after each program and after each commercial break, but also in a "crawl" that ran along the bottom of the screen during some especially risky stunts, as well as showing their "skull and crutches" logo at the bottom right of the screen to symbolize the stunt performed as risky. Nevertheless, the program was blamed for a number of deaths and injuries involving teens and children recreating the stunts.

So you have to be careful who and what you imitate. The results could be deadly. In life there are good examples and bad examples. People need to choose between the two. But even with warnings against bad examples, some people just don't seem to learn.

That's why the apostle John wanted to be sure that his friend, Gaius, understood the difference, and gave specific examples to help him figure it out. In John's third letter, which is just before Jude and Revelation, after commending Gaius for his generosity and hospitality to the visiting teachers and ministers, he gives the warning in verse eleven, “do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.”