Disillusionment

In college, we had a Christian illusionist come do a show on campus. He made a point to tell us that the tricks he did were not "magic." They were simply his developed skills at fooling our eyes and hence our minds. Also in college, our pastor preached a sermon I'll never forget. He was talking about the reasons we struggle in the Christian life. The main reason, he said, is that we believe error instead of truth. In short, we are deluded, illusioned, tricked by our own desire to be in control or by the Enemy's desire to steal, kill and destroy us. Illusion is not a good thing. Basing our lives on false beliefs about ourselves or the world around us is not only dangerous, it can be life-threatening.

Disillusionment, by definition, is "freeing from false belief or illusions." Only, we tend to think of it more as disappointment, making it to our confused minds, a bad thing, rather than a good one. I venture to say, we should pray daily for disillusionment. There is a Christian author I like named Grace Livingston Hill. She's written over 100 short romance novels. In one of the first I read, there was a mother praying for disillusionment for her daughter about the man she was dating. When I read that, something clicked in my head. I finally got the fact that disillusionment is so very important and vital to our faith. Who wants to walk around believing falsehood his or her whole life? I guess some people do.

Remember in the Matrix when Neo is given the choice to take the red pill or the blue pill? I can't remember which was which, but one would let him forget he'd ever met Morpheus and go on living in his illusionary world created by the Matrix. The other would open his eyes to the real world, ugly though it was, but would also give him the opportunity to do something about that ugliness. We all know which one he chose. But remember the traitor? There was a guy on the Nebuchadnezzar with Neo and Morpheus who, though he'd taken the disillusionment pill, prefered the illusion to the truth and was willing to give up the fight for truth in order to go back to his illusionary world. How dangerous that was for all involved. How dangerous is it for us to do the same?

Forgive my continual movie references, but I'm also reminded of The Truman Show where Truman, played by Jim Carey, has been raised on an elaborate television set created around him to broadcast his entire life to the world. He has no idea that he is not living in the real world. He thinks the people and things around him are it. Until one day things stop making sense and he realizes that something is very wrong. In his quest for the truth, he makes the ultimate discovery that there is more out there and that he has been a prisoner all this time, confined to the bubble the producer had made as his world.

Let's not accept things at face value and believe what we hear on television or what we see in magazines. Let's read our Bibles prayerfully, asking God to open our eyes to the falsehoods we've been operating under. Let's ask Him to show us things in our lives that are deluding us and keeping us from knowing and operating under the Truth. Let's pray for disillusionment. Sure, there might be disappointment along with it, as we realize that we have been duped all this time. Sure, we might struggle with the ongoing battle to allow the renewing of our minds to transform our lives and behavior. But, Jesus promised that if we were really His disciples, then we would know the Truth and the Truth would set us free.