It has been said idealists are in love with humanity but never actual people. To love actual people would require one to interact with them, to take time to listen and probe with determination to help, and all of this takes more than clever thoughts and pristine philosophy. C. Fitzsimons Allison says

Concrete situations of diapers, debts, divorce, or listening to and being with someone in depression and despair, is the test of real love. Docetism is the religious way to escape having love tested in the flesh. All of us are tempted to audit life rather than to parrticipate fully and be tested by it.

Allison makes this comment in the context of discussing false doctrine in his The Cruelty of Heresy. Docetists maintained (and maintain) that Jesus only seemed to be a man but never really took on flesh and suffered as a man. God wouldn’t get so dirty, sweaty and bloody. The relationship of sin and heresy is symbiotic. One begets the other, and over the long run it’s impossible to cling to one without it spilling over. It’s not just idealists who keep themselves from getting their hands dirty, but all complainers. Complainers are easily distinguished from lovers because lovers have their hands dirty in the actual work, their own sweat and blood invested in the spouse, family, organization etc at hand, and the recipients of this sacrifice know it. They are the true realists who not only know the problems and weaknesses, but have taken on those problems themselves constructively for the sake of others. This is always costly which is why it always bears fruit.