values vs. ideals

"The trick to uncovering people's values is to assess how they invest their time, energy, money and passion. What do they love and what do they hate? What do they talk about? What do they rally around? But values can be tricky because they are often little more than ideals, what people merely wish they valued and cared for, what they are committed to in theory but not in practice. Many vegitarians eat meat, environmentalists don't recycle, employees don't work, and Christians don't read their Bibles. Ideals are what you want; values are what you do. Ideals become values only if they are lived out."

-- Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission