Dreams give wings to fools

  • The sense­less have vain and false hopes,
    and dreams give wings to fools.
    – Sir­ach 34:1

    Hope­fully I don’t sound like I’m being harsh to quote this pas­sage from the apoc­ryphal book of Sir­ach. I’m a bit of a dreamer myself (and I have the C grade aver­age to prove it), so I have noth­ing but good things to say about the inno­cent capac­ity of peo­ple to imag­ine fab­u­lous­ness and pass the time, or think of won­der­ful things that don’t exist yet and fig­ure out how to make them a real­ity. But I don’t think it’s the guile­less past­time or the par­a­digm shift of inno­va­tion that the author has in mind.

    As one who catches at a shadow and pur­sues the wind,
    so is any­one who believes in dreams.
    What is seen in dreams is but a reflec­tion,
    the like­ness of a face look­ing at itself.
    From an unclean thing what can be clean?
    And from some­thing false what can be true?(34:2–4)
    John Mark Reynolds makes the point in a num­ber of his talks that the mantra of “fol­low your dreams” is given the high sta­tus of inspi­ra­tional words to live by in the cur­rent pop cul­ture. The impli­ca­tion is that ordi­nary peo­ple are ele­vated to the sta­tus of being spe­cial and extra­or­di­nary by hav­ing a dream, and that as such, are enti­tled to spe­cial treat­ment, because rules don’t apply to dreamers.

    It’s just a nice, pleas­ant idea really. And I really wouldn’t mind some of these movies being made, if only there were also movies being made to remind us that many great sins began life as great dreams. Want what you can’t have? Want what some­one else has? Don’t like being an ordi­nary per­son? You can mask your own avarice, pet­ti­ness, dis­si­pa­tion and pride by believ­ing in it when it wears a pleas­ing name.

    Div­ina­tions and omens and dreams are unreal,
    and like a woman in labor, the mind brings forth fan­tasies.
    Unless they are sent by inter­ven­tion from the Most High,
    pay no atten­tion to them.
    For dreams have deceived many,
    and those who put their hope in them have per­ished. (34:5–7)
    And not only can you feel like A Cho­sen One by virtue of hav­ing a dream (as opposed to just hav­ing unreal expec­ta­tions or over­ween­ing ambi­tion), but actions that might be called self-centered, impru­dent, thought­less, or even crim­i­nal are jus­ti­fied if there’s a dream on the line. What “fol­low your dream” movie doesn’t show the kid shout­ing at a par­ent, a spouse lying to their mate, a stu­dent inge­niously deceiv­ing the author­ity figure?

    It’s all just fun, right? Well, yes. Greg the Hus­band does tell me I need to lighten up some­times, and he’s right. I take things too seri­ously. Peo­ple fig­ure things out. But I don’t see much con­ven­tional wis­dom like these words from the 3rd cen­tury B.C. And I have known, and do know, peo­ple who are in the process of break­ing up rela­tion­ships, ruin­ing them­selves finan­cially or just mak­ing them­selves mis­er­able because they bought into the dream cult. And that could have been me sooo eas­ily. Some­times, it prob­a­bly still is. Lord, have mercy.

    With­out such decep­tions the law will be ful­filled,
    and wis­dom is com­plete in the mouth of the faith­ful. (34:8)


    Related posts:

    1. Phony gospels give me the blues
    2. Give us this day
    3. A Vic­to­rian take on the Ortho­dox Church

    May 9th, 2006 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 05.09.2006

    I’m reminded of a bumper sticker “Remem­ber you are unique. Just like every­one else”.

    I totally agree, there are peo­ple who feel that their need to be happy all the time, every minute, trumps all else, and leave peo­ple, jobs, emo­tions, fam­ily, and finances in their wake. Lord have Mercy.

  • Grace

    Oh good. Greg told me he thought I was being too dark with all this. So I was really hop­ing the effect wasn’t one of unre­lent­ing dis­ap­proval. As I said, there are dreams that *aren’t* bad. What I have a prob­lem with is the sort of Dream Cult that says every dream is beyond reproach.

    But maybe that came through.

  • s-p

    Hi Grace,
    I’m with you. The “dream cult” and moti­va­tional speaker dri­vel is noth­ing but nar­cis­sism run ram­pant under a new name. The self image pop psy­cholo­gies keep repack­ag­ing the same stuff with new labels and it IS a cult that feeds on people’s delu­sions of grandeur, inflated self assess­ments and inse­cu­ri­ties of com­par­ing them­selves to oth­ers. It is often at other’s expense but ulti­mately at the expense of someone’s soul because they’ve sold them­selves to a false god that is ulti­mately an idol of their own delu­sional image of them­selves that they offer every­thing in their life to. So, no you weren’t harsh at all. I’M harsh. :)

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