A little girl says a curse word. The father steps in to correct her. She replies; "But you say the same thing all the time."  Then the father says the words we have all heard; "Do as I say, not as I do."

All teaching (moral or otherwise) has an ideal, while its application is always inconsistent. This is because no human is able to immediately nor perfectly live up to any ideal. The moment we subscribe to anything we immediately embrace some measure of hypocrisy.

But this should never stop us from pursuing ideals. For it is the pursuit that changes us, bit by bit, into the ideal we are pursuing. Most toddlers can barely pronounce their words, it would be silly to tell them to abandon the pursuit of language because they so greatly miss the mark. 

The point is that days, years, decades from now those things that are ideals today will be realized by those who go after them. Those who give up hope because they are "realistic" only find a reality with nothing to celebrate.

Jesus flipped the religious world on its head because they had developed externals that appeared to be moral, but in fact had proven they had lost any kind of humanity.  His words should remind all of us not to abandon our pursuit of the right thing for the right reasons, for in the end this is what ultimately produces righteous people, not some behavior modification system. (Matt 25:37)

When we see amazing ideals. When we next hear of a "Pie-in-the-Sky" idea. The right thing (read righteous thing) is to go after it, fully knowing we will miss aspects of it along the way. But keep going. It will be our shared future. Love motivates us to do this for each other.

Our world is full of dead religion that will tell us to just give up. To just put our heads down and do our duty. To quit dreaming. To quit living in la la land. Dead religion tells us to play defense, and to settle for the status quo. It uses masses of people who have lost to justify its falsehood.

The ideals we have for ourself, our family, our world are worth each of us getting up today and striving after them.  They have always been pulling us, pushing us, calling us, and now joining us. They are bigger than us and are also a part of us.  

Grasp this and we touch life, miss this and we are the walking dead.

I hope you will try once again for your pie in the sky. We are all counting on you.

Thanks,

k