[This, I actually wrote in 2015, thinking I might start a blog]. It’s only now that I actually have a blog so here it is! I post it four years later.]
Dreams, I think, are a neutral thing. They can do harm or good depending on our relationship with them.
There’s some modern promotion of the belief that reaching dreams is what makes you who you are. You can’t let anything get in the way of your dreams lest you lose the fulfillment of your identity.
But I disagree; That’s dangerous.
Of course, dreams as aspirations are, or can be, beautiful things, and they are integral to our humanity. We are dream machines. And in that way are similar to our maker, I think.
Every dream has some element of design and some element of beauty.
We have dreams, for example, of who we can or should be or dreams about being with someone – all with design and beauty. There’s also dreams of having something, and completing some project, likewise with design and beauty. Since the generation of those dreams is very much a part of us, as designed by God, how can it be wrong to submit ourselves entirely to the pursuit of our dreams?
Even secular culture- the atheistic foundation of which has no room for destiny or purpose – places a quality of destiny on achieving those dreams. Much of western culture feeds on this principle, promoting a consuming drive to achieve dreams, almost as if you achieve your true existence by doing so.
The danger is present in that dreams, ever so so illusive, always subject the dreamer to a period of deficit or incompletion. Naturally, one who dreams of being prime minister, for example, has to accept that they are not presently there yet. A degree of pain accumulates if the dreamer needs that dream for fulfillment.The dreamer, as a result, feels all the anger and fear and pain of a genuine lacking need. Ultimately they become a slave to their dream. It no longer belongs to them. they belong to the dream. They lose the the capacity to enjoy the moment, living for their future dream. The design and beauty of that dream etch themselves into the pattern of the dreamer’s life as a kind of idol.
This culture of dependence on the fulfillment of dreams generates gaunt, unsatisfied, frustrated ghost chasers. I notice people living either in rabid addiction to a certain dream’s fulfillment, or living with a perpetual sense of defeat, under the shadow of an unmet dream. Parents search their children for potential, imposing dreams of who they must become rather than treasuring who they are now. Youths shoulder the impossible task of finding themselves or defining themselves by feats in the direction of dreams. I submit that this dream chasing is a humanistic response to our sense of fallen-nes. The fervent nature of our chasing correlates to the prominence of our brokenness – brokenness which we all feel but may or may not admit or be cognizant of. Dream chasing builds for us an artificial redemption. We sense, ever so subconsciously, and thus all the more dangerously, that we need it; its absence accuses us.
Having experienced some years of anxiety, I developed an unhealthy relationship with dreams. While they served as a motivation by which I accomplished significant things, they also served as an escape. I dreamed of a better self, seeking to escape myself – I would not have won as many awards as I did if I was not running from myself. Because of my dependence on these dreams – dreams of who I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to do- I constantly submitted myself to the injury of their incompleteness.
With this dependence on the fulfillment of dreams comes an unrealistic sense of responsibility, thus the dreamer experiences shame when it is not fulfilled. Having the dream unfulfilled also presents to the dreamer a perceived void in that person’s sense of completion, thus the fear.
For about year, on account of perpetually illusive dreams, I would regularly, on impulse, look at the back of my hand and say, “who am I?” My sense of self was under fire.
Indeed, if reaching dreams is what makes us who we are, then “who I am” at the time depended on me achieving what I could not grasp. I was haunted by a sense of deficit in my relationships, accomplishments, expressions of faith, habits, character. Never enough.
In this way, we dreamers enslave ourselves to our dreams, and they no longer belong to us. We belong to them. We dance for them.
Let me suggest as an alternative – and it is this alternative which liberated me – a wider perspective on dreams.
Consider, firstly that you are a dream fulfilled. If dreams are the beautiful design of a mind then you are a dream of God fulfilled.
Humanity likewise, pleased God as a fulfillment of design and a manifestation of beauty. A significant portion of your identity can be secured simply by the fact that you were made. That dream is accomplished already. We need more than this, however, because while this dream explains our substance, it doesn’t provide the redemption for our identity which our fallennes requires. Thankfully, God dreamed larger.
Also conceived in the mind of God before the universe’s birth was the dream of Immanuel. It seemed worthy to God to so arrange (as dreams cause one to do) the course of history to accommodate his entrance. He purposed to live among us, and accomplished his dream in Christ. The design of this dream includes the redemption of humanity in a unified body, joined to God. This body acquires it’s identity primarily in the Immanuel Event — God with us, God for us, God in us — culminating in the cross. Thus, we who have accepted that invitation — we, a conglomerate of broken dreams — are given the alternative to dream chasing. We join one whole, complete, undefeatable dream.
We who belong to Christ, assert that our fulfillment was already accomplished in the Immanuel Dream come true.
Consider with me that you were dreamed in the mind of God and created. Furthermore, you belong to the fulfillment of his dream of being with us and restoring us. We are the Bride character in the wedding feast prophecy. Search no further for fulfillment. This is the alternative to unhealthy dream chasing: Find yourself within God’s dream and rest there, forever. Don’t try to define yourself by the completion of dreams. Trust, rather, that your significance, purpose, and identity have been defined for you.
I have felt the fear of losing who I am, and the responsibility of chasing dreams to fulfill myself, slip off my shoulders as I assert daily that I belong to God’s vision of redemption, his dream of reconciliation. “I belong to the resurrection,” I spoke into the night. The First Dreamer has accomplished my security and my peace within his larger design. And that is beautiful.
The place of dreams, our dreams, is now more about opportunity. We need not fear that losing a dream will bar us from our fulfillment. We never needed the dream for our identity; we are secure in God’s dream. With this principle at at work we can ensure that our dreams belong to us and that we don’t begin to belong to them. Dreams are all opportunities to shine, radiating from our first assertion that our radiance is found primarily, simply, in that we belong to God.
Allow God to teach you to assess your dreams in light of his dream. Lose the dreams that belong to the old order of things. Forget the dreams that steal you from the present and from your loved ones. Surrender your dreams to Jesus. Heal from the injury of dream-enslavement. Embrace the dreams that feel consistent with your belonging to God. Embrace any dreams that you are certain God has given you. Wait patiently for their fulfillment, understanding that in the interim – the period in which the dream is unmet – you are just as fulfilled, loved and secure, as you were on the day you first accepted Immanuel’s invitation to belong to him and be with him.
Ironically, when we stop idolizing dreams, We have permission to dream bigger. When we understand that dreams cannot construct a foundation for our identity, we can launch dreams like fireworks from the foundation that has been given to us – That foundation is Jesus. From the Immanuel Dream, naturally, the dream engines in our minds receive the permission and resources to envision God’s Dream lived out.
Even in the dangerous land of dreams, Christ is enough, because he has secured you within the dream of his Father. Find yourself within the dream of God and rest there, forever.