My idealistic ways

I was out the other day and noticed a young child in a stroller who had a bottle of milk in her mouth, propped up on the side, just sitting there. Wanting to impress my wife and my mother, I said to them, “You know, you are not supposed to do that with a child because it could lead to problems later on.” I had read that in one of the books that I am desperately digesting in preparation of Isaac’s arrival. I know, I know, books are nothing like the real thing. But, what will it hurt in trying to be better informed? Books are a guide, they are not the concrete rule. Anyways, my mom’s response to my comment, which I thought was a very insightful assessment of the situation, was to roll her eyes, like she often does with me, and claim, “You are so idealistic.” Shaking her head she says, “Just you wait.” I love my mom.

For the second time in a couple of days, this idea of being idealistic verses realistic has come up. I had talked with a friend of mine about ministry and new ministers. He had commented about how when talking to new ministers, those just starting out, candidates for ministry even, that you find a level of excitement that you do not see everyday. “Before they become jaded by the church”, he says, which I can totally relate with. You learn things in school and you see the church a certain way when you first start out and then when you get into the church, you find things that you are not prepared for and you end up dealing with things that are totally different than anything you ever imagined. This is not just in ministry, it seems to be pervasive throughout our lives. It seems that this struggle is on-going, the battle between idealistic and realistic. Does it always have to be this way? I mean, in order to be realistic and in the moment, must we give up a desire for things to be better, to be idealistic? We feel this when we are young. The idea that the world is ours to conquer, we can do anything and we can be anything. And then, something happens, we get a little older, we have an experience or two, and the next thing you know, our idealism is gone, and we think, “I guess this is it. This is what they warned me about.” And then, and this is where it really gets bad, we start raining on other people’s parades. We think, well, if I cannot be idealistic, neither should you. And then we become cynical and jaded toward other people and their idealism.

I believe this goes much deeper than just being optimistic or pessimistic. For me, if optimism sees the glass half full, then idealistic means working actively to fill the glass the rest of the way up. Now, if this metaphor holds true, and if pessimism sees the glass half empty, does being cynical and jaded means that you are actively trying to pour the rest of whatever is in the glass out? If we live our lives jaded and cynical, do we not fall into the trap of trying to hold down the dreamers of this world because our dreams have not been realized? Possibly, if we are not careful.

The prophet Joel once described the Day of the Lord by quoting God saying, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughter will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young me will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit on those days (2:28-29).” This message was so important that Peter repeated it in his first sermon at Pentecost (see Acts 2). What’s truly important is that we do not let the day to day junk that we deal with take away from our desire to be better and to live differently than we are right now. We should never stop dreaming and we should never forget about God’s Spirit that resides with us, throughout all of our junk. Realistically, we should live in the world in the most idealistic way possible, dreaming dreams and visioning visions of the way things can be. God wants nothing more and demands nothing less than for us to a little bit better today than we were yesterday.