ideology

I’ve recently been made fun of/criticized (I don’t know which, perhaps both) for being “young and ideological.”

Apparently that will all end when I grow up. Right now, I’m just too inexperienced to know that my opinions are impractical.

That might all be true, but of course my young ideological brain cannot accept it. This is probably just me being ideological, but isn’t that a GOOD thing sometimes? I hope that when I turn 30 my mind doesn’t automatically revert to the factual and the realistic. I refuse to allow myself to stop evaluating what I think and what I believe and instead settle for what has always worked. What if the conventional takes you in exactly the wrong direction? What happens when you reject all new ideas because they’re not what you’re comfortable with? What if you become so disillusioned that you mistake habit for truth?

I believe that you can see someone’s life change with one conversation. I believe that my job, especially as a Christian, is to give whatever I can of myself to others without an ounce of selfishness (which I will be working toward getting right until the day I die). I believe that it is those who are naive who usually accomplish the most positive change in this world – because they’re too unseasoned and unaffected by realistic limitations to know what they can’t do. I believe that God is bigger than any church or any person or any generation or anything we’ve defined him as, and I want to know him better because I’ve seen enough to know that I know very little. I believe that Christianity demands infinitely more of us than we (myself included) have ever been willing to admit. I believe that I should love people no matter what they did, are doing, or will do. I think that the American political system is disappointing, but it has enormous potential. I think war is terrible on many levels (though I will most likely never become a protestor) and I really wrestle with what to do with that concept as a follower of Christ. I believe that my education is my responsibility (and that it is important) and that it is healthy to learn things I don’t agree with and respect the opinions of others if I want them to respect mine. I want to adopt at least one child because I believe that I (personally, as this is not for everyone) can do more good for that individual child by getting my hands dirty and giving them a real home with a lot of love than by donating to an orphanage.

I could go on and pack this poor post to the brim with what I believe about the world. But the basic bottom line is that I would hate to imagine my life marked by a resignation to the realistic instead of a search for what more there could be.

So please don’t dampen my excitement or my inquisitiveness because you think I’m too ideological. You might be right – but I think the minute I stop looking at the world that way is the very minute I will lose the desire to change it.