Disillusioned?
With a backlash on his healthcare policies; accusations of aloofness, weakness and ineffectual leadership; protest marches in the street; and comments about dorky jeans, America's disillusionment with Barack Obama is starting to gain momentum. But wasn't it inevitable? In a consumer culture where longevity is no virtue, we hail heroes only to see them humbled. After all, to be persuaded to buy something new you've got become disenchanted with something old.
Disillusionment is epidemic.
Humans are, to some extent, mythmakers, and all too often the stories we weave are too big or elaborate to fit reality. Therefore, disillusionment is necessary for us to embrace what is genuine, seeing through myths that entrance us. Where Christians part company with the rhetoric of advertisers is that we do not see through one illusion simply to adopt another.
The biblical drama of creation, fall and redemption is intensely realistic and brooks no illusions about reality, people and our products. As much as it illuminates, the Bible is, in many respects, a demythologizing work, cutting through the manifold illusions we create about ourselves, others and the places we inhabit, allowing attentive hearers to perceive reality more clearly. Disillusionment under these terms becomes a blessing rather than a curse, containing something of the sacred. Consider the definition of faith offered by Quaker writer, Parker Palmer: 'faith is the courage to face into our illusions and allow ourselves to be disillusioned about them, the courage to walk through our disillusions and dispel them.'
The Christian conception of disillusionment is deeply conditioned by courage. Facing up to our thinly veiled stories about reality is not easy, but it is our calling. Faith means we do not flinch in the face of disillusionment, papering over the cracks with other myths, but choose to live in the face of truth. The call to 'live with unveiled faces' (2 Corinthians 3:18) defines not only our approach to God, but also our approach to the world and ourselves. Faith is, we must acknowledge, often more uncomfortable than comforting.
Yet how can we practice faithful disillusionment; disillusionment that embraces reality yet counters despair? Disillusionment that does not turn from those who must inevitably disappoint exaggerated expectations? By living in the hope that the biblical narrative insists is also part of reality. At the cross of Christ we see illusions stripped away, powers and authorities made a public spectacle (Colossians 2:15), and sin revealed. In Christ's resurrection we grasp the certainty of Christian hope, leading to the joyful embrace of reality in all its complexity and brokenness.
Ben Care
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