Idolizing Possibilities

How idolizing what could be can keep us from being faithful

Justin and I started secretly dating the second semester of our first year at college together. 

I say secretly because I didn’t really want the word to get out. I wasn’t embarrassed of him or anything. I just didn’t want to shut down any potential better options. 

Nice, right? 

I have done some reflection on this issue of mine over the years - hoping to outgrow this. And then I noticed something similar just a few weeks ago. It wasn’t about a husband but about a job. Seems like I should be more mature than this. It is about twenty-five years later after all. 

What is this? 

I have a tendency to romanticize possibility - and to idolize potentials. My imagination can run wild with all that could be. I construct the most perfect scenario in my mind and then I struggle to say yes to good, real (but less than perfect) things right in front of me. 

Photo by Kit Suman on Unsplash

I like sand. Not sand in my car or sand in my bathing suit. I like sand as a way of approaching the future. Sand > concrete. Sand represents a lot of possibility and imagination. Who knows what could get built and erected in all that space with all that material?! Castles and moats! And then we can easily knock it down and begin again and again. No permanency. No commitment. The possibilities are endless. 

Kind of. 

I remember in my mid-twenties feeling like I was pouring concrete on my life’s path. So I am going to marry this person? Concrete. We are going to live in the Twin Cities after college? More concrete. We will youth pastor with this church community? Concrete. 

It feels a little silly and obvious to say this next thing - but living in Minneapolis meant not living in all the imagined potential places. And there are a lot of places to live, I have noticed. 

If I am wanting to share the blame with this pattern in my life, I don’t need to look far. We live in a culture that is obsessed with better and with more. This makes it even harder to be content - or grateful - for what we have. And now with social media, I know more about all the amazing things everyone else has or does. Our imaginations of what could be are constantly kindled.  And it makes it difficult to make a decision and say yes to a good thing.

The problem with idolizing possibility is that it keeps you from being present to what is real - what is right in front of you. It’s hard to steward the job, the relationships, the opportunity you actually have because you are so busy pining and day-dreaming about something better. 

It’s hard to be faithful with the little I currently have when I am idolizing the better I wish I had. 

Jesus tells a story in Matthew 25 about three guys entrusted with different amounts of money. At the end, the master rewards the workers that took initiative. “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’”

If we want more, we will have to be faithful with what is. This is not the most exciting thing I’ve imagined but it is reasonable. It is doable with God’s companionship. It is kind. 

I had assumed that God was like me - underwhelmed and unimpressed with my real, actual life. He wished I was better. That I had chosen better and done more at this point. 

But part of what a high view of God makes possible is making decisions and saying yes. If God is good and we are beloved, then we have the courage to show up to our real lives. We can say yes. We can try. We can even fail. We can say no. We can take initiative. 

Dallas Willard shocked me years ago when describing our freedom in Christ:

“When our children, John and Becky, were small, they were often completely in my will as they played happily in the back garden, though I had no preference that they should do the particular things they were doing there or even that they should be in the back garden instead of playing in their rooms or having a snack in the kitchen. Generally we are in God’s will whenever we are leading the kind of life he wants for us. And that leaves a lot of room for initiative on our part, which is essential: our individual initiatives are central to his will for us.”

Our decisions do make our lives. And our foundation for taking initiative and making decisions is that God is good. Maybe concrete pouring isn’t so scary because of God’s love for us.

Amen.