By RTF Staff Writer Graceland King

A role model is someone people look up to right?  Someone whose actions are admired by others. Someone who stands out from the crowd. Someone who can be considered a leader.

If you think about it, that’s a whole lot of pressure on one individual!

Its easy to pass judgment on our role models when they make one mistake because, in our eyes, they are supposed to be perfect all around. But we forget that these leaders aren’t perfect. They try to be for their follower’s sakes, but there’s always a time when they will slip up. That is the time we should give them our support.

Take a look at our teen celebrities. There are a lot of them that do plenty of things for the community that are completely forgotten when a blemish comes to overshadow their reputations.  Since they are the people a lot of us look up to, they should be responsible for the kind of influence they have on teens today.  So they have a whole bunch of pressure on them to be “perfect”.  We shouldn’t hold it against them if they slip up once or twice. Have you ever noticed how positive God is? Even though we screw up, he is still there with us rooting us on to finish our race. If we want to be more like Christ, we should still support our peers and keep encouraging them. Not putting them down.

So why don’t we give them credit for the good things that they do? And when they do things that don’t sit right with you, make sure that the guards to your heart and mind are on duty. God placed his only son into an environment where temptation was everywhere, but Jesus didn’t fall into sin. If Jesus went through the same temptations that are present in our everyday lives, we can resist the urge to do the worldly things that role models might show once in a while. Don’t follow their example, but still be there for them to support the good things that they do.

Who knows? Maybe in the process of doing all this encouragement, you become a role model to someone else!

______________________________

Graceland King is a talented 15-year-old writer who loves to write poems, short stories, and lyrics. She plays the bass in a youth praise band and continually tries to keep her spiritual fire burning!