Peter and I have a running debate. He calls me a pessimist. I respond by saying I’m a realist. Sometimes, he’s willing to grant me that title. And it’s easy enough for me to respond to the world realistically when it comes to making mundane personal decisions. For instance, someone will ask us if we can go out to dinner. I’ll take a look at the calendar, note that we have five evenings out in a row, and say, “No. We won’t be able to join you.” Even though the night is free, it’s realistic to think we will be wiped out by then.
But when I think about politics and ethics and the thorny problems that exist all around, realism only gets me so far. Because, realistic as I might be about our daily life, I am also an idealist. I want peace among warring factions. I want all pregnant women to have the resources, personally and within their communities, to carry their babies to term. I want all people with disabilities to have access to education, health care, and friendship. I want an end to poverty. But I’m afraid that an ideal solution to these problems is untenable.
I’ve written here before about our current fascination with the HBO show, The Wire. In Season Three, which we just finished, a police sergeant sets up a “free zone” in which drug-enforcement laws will be waived. Drug dealers can sell their product freely, so long as they do it within a certain row of abandoned buildings, without violence. As a result, neighborhoods that have been riddled with crime become communities again. The free zone is “hell on earth,” in the words of one character. And yet it is a realistic way to deal with the problem of drugs. It got me thinking.
So I asked myself the popular question, “What would Jesus do?” I’m not sure. Throughout the Bible God decrees ideal standards for living. Most of us are familiar with the contents of the ten commandments, and there are hundreds of other ordinances in the Old Testament, not to mention the instructions from Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount or the words of Paul in the New Testament letters. Lots of do’s and don’t’s, or, a picture of ideal human life, life with God. And yet God, Jesus, Paul, all seem to recognize that human beings don’t do what they ought to do, much of the time. Human beings don’t live the ideal.
So there’s a realism that shows up, side by side with the ideals, even in Scripture. Take Deuteronomy 15. In verse four, it states, “There should be no poor among you.” Just a few verses later, “There will always be poor people in the land.” The ideal, and the real. Jesus echoed these sentiments many years later. On the one hand, he says, “the last will be first” (Matthew 20) and talks about serving the poor. Clearly, he has God’s ideals in mind when it comes to caring for people. And yet, he also recognizes reality: “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26). Similarly, in Luke 17: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.”
So what would Jesus do, when confronted with euthanasia, abortion, sex outside of marriage, drugs, poverty? And what should I do as a citizen of this country and a follower of Jesus?
Do I want a realistic solution to the problem of drug use in America? To the problem of abortion? To the problem of poverty? To the problem of health care? How do I care for real people living real, messy lives? Is it too much to hold on to my ideals?
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