Dis-Illusioned
We live in an age of disillusionment. The flame of our ideals are snuffed out by the cold, wet blanket of reality. There seems to be no sphere that remains untainted with disillusion. Marriage, politics, money, success, and heroes all seem to disappoint us, and many of us assign serious disillusion to God and Christianity.
I don't think any of us would argue with the fact that there are certain things about God, Church and Christianity that are really unsettling. I’ve been a follower of Christ for 40 years and a pastor for 35 years but there are things about Christianity that I still find unsettling -- and so, consequently, sometimes doubt, disappointment and even disillusion creeps into my soul.
But we often carry misconceptions about God and Christianity around in our minds and our hearts. These misconceptions are foreign to the Bible, yet they shape our expectations of how God will act and how our Christian life will be experienced.
So much of my personal disappointment and disillusion comes because I’m believing in a false god. I’m believing in an illusion, a myth about God that isn’t true and isn’t part of biblical Christianity. There are several illusions that persist about God and about Christianity.
The god or gods who disillusion us usually never existed to begin with. I’ve found that to be true personally and I’ve found that to be true with the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with disappointed and disillusioned people over the past four decades.
The poster boy for this article appears in Mark 9. He has a son who is in a bad way, so he brings his son to Jesus and he levels an authentic, heartfelt statement to which many of us can relate: "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).
OBSERVATIONS ABOUT SPIRITUAL DISAPPOINTMENTS/DISILLUSIONMENTS
Spiritual doubts and disappointments are ubiquitous. Everybody has them.
True things can leave you disappointed and unsettled. It doesn’t make them less true.
Many doubts and disappointments are the consequence of believing in a god that never existed anyway
Don’t be embarrassed. Humanity has been disillusioned by gods since the beginning, from Ra to Zeus to Jupiter.
Early Christians were considered atheists by those who believed in the Greek and Roman gods. Their message to pagans was that they had the wrong god(s). That problem persists today. Some of us believe in a god that doesn’t exist; when we think of god we’re not thinking of the God of the Bible but rather a false pretender god.
FROM DISILLUSIONMENT TO UNBELIEF
A few years ago I heard a guy say that in our region of the country, 25 percent of people consider themselves irreligious and most of those were church attendees at one time.
But something happened. They quit believing.
Most of these stories have several things in common:
Grew up in a Christian environment.
Experienced a childhood conversion.
Transitioned to a very secular environment.
Liked it . . . a lot!
Began asking adult questions about childhood faith.
But many people walk way from faith because they’re disillusioned with a non-existent god. The version of God many people leave never existed in the first place.
When I hear some people describe the god they no longer believe in, I think to myself: I don’t believe in that god either. That god doesn’t exist. The god you quit believing in wasn’t worth believing in. Let me just give you one example of a false god with whom people have become disillusioned:
The Good-Luck-Charm god
The good-luck-charm god that doesn’t allow bad things to happen to good, innocent people. I heard Andy Stanley call this god the “Bodyguard god.” That might be a better name.
The unspoken assumption is this: we are going to church now and we are pursuing a Christian life, so in return, God will grease the skids for us and make our life easy. Moreover, he won’t let anything bad happen to us.
Several years ago, I was with a bunch of guys who were getting onto three helicopters and I noticed that each group of men seemed to want me to ride in their helicopter. It was very gratifying, and I started thinking to myself, “What have I done to make myself so popular with these men? I must be really charming to have such rapport with these guys.” Well, I soon discovered the real reason they wanted me riding with them. It wasn’t because they thought I was such a great guy and they enjoyed my company. It was because they knew I was a chaplain and they thought God wouldn’t let anything bad happen to the helicopter that I was riding in. They were looking at me as some kind of good luck charm; more specifically they were looking at God as a good-luck-charm.
That god doesn’t exist. The God of the Bible doesn’t claim to be a good luck charm or a bodyguard. He doesn’t promise to make our lives easy. Just read the stories of the heroes of the Bible. All the heroes of the Christian faith were treated terribly by the first century Roman empire, and by the leaders of the temple.
Christianity started with a horrible thing happening to a really good person. If you’ve grown disillusioned and lost your faith in Good-Luck-Charm god -- good! That god doesn’t exist.
I’m suggesting that if you’re disillusioned or if you’re considering walking away or if you’ve already walked away, you may have walked away unnecessarily from a god who never existed anyway.
Pain is not a rational reason to be disillusioned about God; but it is an emotional reason to be disillusioned. Maybe you’re going through something difficult right now and you’ve been disappointed by a false gods. The real God is here, and he offers himself as the remedy, the solution. It’s OK for us to call out to him like that authentic father with the heartfelt prayer, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief.”
