Runnin' Down a Dream

“Runnin’ down a dream…that never would come to me…”—Tom Petty

It seems that many of us in the church are running after a dream that will never come to fruition. We spend years of energy hoping and searching for something that no longer exists and maybe never did. We are looking for an ideal situation that we think will give us hope, strength, or happiness. This dream comes in many particular versions: an ideal family, an ideal job, an ideal society. We spend so much time searching and dreaming for this that the reality of our lives passes us by and we fail to notice how God is at work, even in the most difficult and painful experiences or the mundane and ordinary events.

Many churches (and Christians) live striving after the past, wrongly thinking that life was somehow better. In particular, the society of the 1950s North American culture is often idealized as the highest that we can achieve in our lives. In this culture, it is assumed, families had definite structure, society was based on the Judeo-Christian ethic, and America was always right.

The problem is that reality often gets in the way of our dreaming.

Phyllis Tickle, in her brief survey of the contemporary scene, The Great Emergence, highlights some of the difficulties that the 1950s culture was dealing with that led to even our current situation.

Among the major issues was the role of women in the household. During World War II, women were expected to keep the factories running because the majority of men were off fighting the war. Children during this age, despite any thoughts of ‘should’, grew up with their mothers working.

At the same time the booming post war economy led to men (and women) working longer hours outside the home. With more opportunities for women to work, both parents left the home, making it more difficult for children to grow up with their biological families.

The 1950s also greater developments in contraception and hormone control. This led to a more diverse workforce, with men and women competing for the same jobs. This in turn created a more difficult job market with fewer jobs available for more candidates.

The stabilization that the 1950s promises simply wasn’t there. Societies are always in flux, always in motion. It does no good to yearn for a return to ‘yester-year’ because ‘yester-year’ never really existed.

In other words, for those of us who are trying to return the past, stop looking. Your just runnin’ down a dream (to quote Tom Petty). It’s never going to come to you.

The older I get, the more I begin to realize that following Christ is not so much about recapturing the past as it is following Him into the future while dealing realistically with our present.

The world is dramatically different and its time we came to terms with it…not to lament the past, but to survey the field. I suggest there are three major ideas that the Christian Church needs to come to terms with.

1. The ‘traditional’ American family no longer exists. Whether or not the traditional family ever existed is a different question, but there can be no doubt that the idea of two parents (a knowing father and warm mother) nuclear family (consisting of cookie cutter kids) is no longer the model for most families. Most families today consist of parents, step-parents, single-parents, grand-parent parents with children that may or may not be biologically related to the adults with which they reside. This does not mean that God is not active in these families. Very often, God is very much in the midst of these situations. While the church can (and must ) encourage faithful obedience to the Scriptures, the church needs to understand that society has fundamentally changed. Instead of seeking an approach that stresses people’s biological ties to one another, the church needs to have an inclusive programming that encourages people from all generations to relate to one another. A local congregation should have the feel of an extended family.

2. There is no authority. The erosion of the concept of ‘authority’ in today’s culture is well documented. Whether it’s found in Burger King’s “sometimes you gotta break the rules” or in every single Disney movie where the main character discovers that all she has to do is ‘believe in herself’, people have determined that they themselves are the final authority. They decide what is true, they decide what is right. After 1517 and prior to the 1900s the question of authority had been answered with the Bible (the Bible says…). After 1900, this was commonly replaced with the ‘American Way’. But since the 1960s, the question of authority has been answered with a ‘?’. In order to gain a hearing with post modern society, the church has to have an answer in regards to authority. We know that Jesus is Lord, but how do we live this day to day?

3. Truth is experiential, not intellectual. For a bookworm like me, this is the most difficult proposition to understand. Modern people do not like to think the truth, they like to feel the truth. The merits of such a statement can be debated, but reality is reality. The good news is that Christian truth is not a proposition to be understood, but a Person to have relationship with.

How are we to live in this age, and how are we to proceed, then with life and faith? Here just a couple of suggestions.

First, stop living in the past…or rather, stop trying to recreate the past. The past was once the present, filled with all of its imperfections and problems…just as the future will also be filled with problems and shortcomings.

Second is to stop running after a dream. Life is what life is, and we should enjoy every inglorious, incomplete, unfulfilled moment of it. Life is filled with people who disappoint us (heck…I’m the guy who does most of the disappointing), life is filled with hurt, life is filled with heartache. Life is filled with joy and with gladness and with complete moments.

But the most glorious truth we can understand is that God is present with us in all of these moments. In all of our sorrow and in all of our disappointment, in all of our joy and in all of our happiness, God is present with us. We have to stop depending on others…no matter how close to us…husbands, wives, children, teachers…to give us happiness. We must learn to live in the moment. We must learn to live in and to love the gloriously imperfect lives we lead. Things will never match up to our dreams. Things will never be as we want them. Things will never be as we think they ought to be…and that’s ok. It’s time to stop chasing after that dream.

The only thing worth chasing in this world is God. We must chase after Him and depend on Him. Only after we stop chasing after a dream can we truly live.