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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Real and ideal

"Real things cannot usually stand up to our vision of ideal things." -- Gary Ledbetter in Is There a Church within Your Church? (Center for Theological Research, March 2009)

Do we forget the ideal and settle down with the real?
Do we live with the real and strive for the ideal?
Do we ignore the real and pretend to be ideal?
Do we just throw up our hands?


Thoughts?

2 comments:

Jokers55 said...

I say from my own experience that I have gone through all 4 positions over time.

R. L. Vaughn said...

I think I would have to agree. I believe I been there -- the "throw up our hands" a few times!

I'd say #2 is what I would recommend: "live with the real and strive for the ideal."

IIRC, in Bro. Ledbetter's context he was talking about the frustration that might cause folks to give up because of the reality of their churches being so far from what they think is what they ought to be -- the ideal. That certainly can be a frustration.