Ideal and Real

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After I signed my overload contract to teach this fall, I ran into a former student of mine who thinks I'm amazing. It's always nice to run into people who feel that way about you when you've just been through a week where people who feel the opposite bare their teeth. We had a lengthy conversation, and when he told me that I'd given him many truths about which to think, I reminded him that I know a lot more about what ought to be than the way things really are.

During the course where he and I met, I taught my students about the Ideal Gas Law. We talked about the differences between ideal gases and real ones. I point out in lecture that it is possible to force real gases to behave like ideal gases if you can force them into a particular and single set of criteria. The amount of energy required to do this is substantial, and so frequently we settle with real data and estimates rather than going to the trouble to force things to behave in an ideal way.

Just as there are ideal gases and real gases, there are ideal people and real people. Most people, and in fact everyone I know, is actually a real person rather than an ideal one. You see, it takes a great deal of energy and effort to force yourself to conform to ideal behavior, and since it's coming from inside something that is not ideal, I don't think it's possible for anything imperfect to be perfect in and of itself. It works for gases because something more perfect and more powerful provides the energy. Gases don't want to behave ideally any more than we do.

That's kind of the paradox. While there might be an ideal and while a man might be able to strive very well and come very close, since we are all real people, none of us can and will be ideal. At the end of "The King and I", Anna says of the king "I don't know if any man lived as well as he could, but this man tried." The quest for ideal sets up those Don Quixotes to be either scapegoat or saint. As long as they manage to be successful, they come across as saints, but as soon as they fail, which they will, people take that opportunity to turn them into scape goats and tie their beams to the mote. A single moment of weakness does not ablate a life of piety any more than one great deed excuses a life of debauchery. We are all real; nobody is ideal.

Perhaps that's why I am so particularly grateful for the Atonement of Christ. His liabilities cover our weaknesses. He pays the price of justice. His blood pays the price of our punishment. With his stripes we are healed. By His stripes it is for us as if it never happened. Only a being greater than we can provide the energy necessary to force us into narrow criteria where it is possible for us, however briefly the moment may be, to act as if we were ideal. Christ is the only Real Man who is also an Ideal Man. He understands how to bridge the gap between what is and what ought to be. I don't know how it works; I just know that it does, and I testify that it does. I challenge you to turn to Him for help to be an Ideal Man, and I promise you that as you do He will show you the way in which you should walk and help you keep it.