We bought our house at the beginning of the pandemic. It was exactly what you would picture when you hear the term “fixer-upper”: the carpet was stained, the guest bathroom door opened a third of the way, a window pane was broken, the subfloor was bubbling, and in some places, it had decayed to the point that a local worm community was thriving. For my wife and I, it was a great deal and a blank canvas. She watched videos on how to make the home feel bigger. I researched how to build a tile shower. And you know we created a Pinterest board that included our wildest dreams: a Murphy door, pristine landscaping, and rugs as far as the finger could scroll. We knew this house would take some work, but we had no idea how much work we had signed up for.
I’m what you may call a dreamer. I have lofty – sometimes unrealistic – ideas about life, how things should work, and goals. My eyes are inclined to be set on the sky, and sometimes my feet lose contact with the ground. HGTV doesn’t help my cause when they give the impression that you can perfectly design and remodel a whole house in a weekend, even if it comes down to the wire with the family on their way home. Let me tell you, our one-weekend “dream home renovation” has taken a little longer than anticipated. We’re already on year four in our house and just recently had that window replaced. And really, this place looks nothing like our carefully curated Pinterest board.
While the results of our remodel may not have met my vision of an ideal home and have had little consequences, I do have ideals that can have major consequences. If you are honest with yourself, you probably do too. It is easy to carry ideals that are out of line with the will of God and probably have a selfish hue. You may have some unrealistic visions of what your family should look like, who should and shouldn’t be in your circle of friends, or who should run the country. When we have selfish ideals about our family, we can be disappointed in our children when they aren’t honor-roll students. If we have a perfect picture of who our friends should be, they often look just like us. When you believe a candidate is the archetype of what a president should be, you may overlook their faults (consider Saul in 1 Samuel).
Behind every ideal that sprouts in and of ourselves is an idol. These idols manufacture expectations that are impractical, unrealistic, and unattainable. When we live in the idealistic world an idol creates, we demand others to meet our expectations and even hold God responsible when our way doesn’t align with his. Unwittingly, we end up condemning ourselves because we can’t even live up to the very expectations we’ve set.
Hear me out. I’m not saying ideals are bad; it’s not wrong to have high expectations, but when those expectations are devoid of God, they are only as productive as the idols they serve. Scripture paints a clear picture of the perfection we should fix our eyes on. Jesus is the ideal human (Rom 5; 1 Cor 15:21-22). Through Christ, the Church will one day be the perfect bride (Eph 5:25-26; Rev 19:7-8). Heaven is filled with the presence of God, meaning it’s also absent of the ideals and expectations fabricated by idols (Jer 31:34; Jn 17:3; Rev 21:22-27). The Gospel gives us the only ideal that corresponds to reality. Ideals formed by the Gospel breed new creation. The Gospel quickly tears down our idols and aligns our ideals with God’s. It reveals that we cannot produce or procure perfection. Only in Jesus do we have any hope of the ideal. When we submit our wills and desires to God, he provides everything our ideals promise but fail to deliver. By embracing the ideals of the Gospel, we are molded into the image of Christ.
So when our self-centered ideals are broken, it’s really a gracious gift from God – He clears out our expectations and introduces us to a better reality to hope for. This has captivated my mind for the past month and has caused me to ask questions when my expectations have been broken.
Did this fail because it is something I tried to do on my own?
Why did I act that way when someone didn’t respond how I thought they should?
Is there an idol behind my expectations that is nurturing my ideals?
Our ideals reveal a deeper-rooted problem. When our expectations are broken, they may reveal an idol in our lives. While it may be painful, by demolishing our own ideals we give space for Gospel-informed ideals. When these Gospel-informed ideals take root, they produce not only a vision but a reality grander than anything we could conceive.
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