Dave Schmelzer is a friend of mine and pastor of the Cambridge, MA Vineyard. Jacquie told me he had some interesting things posted on his blog, so I decided to check it out this morning. Here is something Dave wrote on idealism, quoting a man I deeply admire: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "One section I found myself going into in a bit more depth than I expected was
what I anticipated being a brief word to the wise on idealism. I'd
remembered a striking quote from Bonhoeffer on the subject that has only seemed
more profound as the years pass. As I revisited the quote, I was floored
by how much I understood and resonated with a good deal of his comments,
comments that hit me hard when I first read them even as I couldn't believe he was
serious. Idealism a bad thing?
One might regard our endeavor here
as idealistic. And one might, understandably, regard it as a pointed
critique of churches. So I'll be really interested in your response to
Bonhoeffer's thoughts. If you end up sold that idealism is a problem, how do
you recommend keeping big dreams alive without that devolving into toxic
idealism? I'll start with my preface on
the matter, and then it's all Bonhoeffer.
It’s tempting to see idealism as
right at the heart of starting any community of faith, much less one in these
culture centers we’re describing. And
there’s something to that, but it hits its limits very quickly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life
Together, wrote the shocking line, “God hates visionary dreaming.” I read that just as I was helping start an
ambitious ministry to kids in the city with the highest murder rate in the
country. Our team was living in
community. We were all about visionary
dreaming. Otherwise why would we be
there?
And yet Bonhoeffer’s line stuck
with me, a line written as he was running his own ambitious community—an underground
seminary trying to train pastors who wouldn’t bow to Hitler. His point was that idealism wars with reality,
which is warring with God. Yes, we start
with dreams and pursue them, but then we live in the actual as we see what God
is actually up to."
If you want to read the whole post, please go to:
http://notreligious.typepad.com/notreligious/2009/07/are-you-an-idealist-.html