Ever heard of people getting disillusional? People who have been disoriented to reality and been trapped by the haunting shadows all the while groping for substance. They want light yet only seem to be aimlessly wandering in the darkness. Webster defines an illusion as “the act of deceiving; the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled.” It is a person’s perception assumed to be reality but in actuality it is false, a hoax, a lie. What is real and true is misrepresented by a counterfeit, a substitute that gives the appearance of the real but lacks the substance and essence of the real. It is a false idea based on a false reality.
When I was a little kid (some of you still think I am one), I used to have birthday parties at McDonald’s, and there always was a clown or magician who would do magic tricks for us. Being little kids, we did not know that the tricks were not really tricks. Everything the entertainer did was an illusion. Yet we did not know it. For us it was reality, for thus we perceived it so. But it was a false idea based on a false reality. The adults, well, they knew exactly what was going on. They knew from an objective understanding that the tricks and magic was only an illusion.
So I bring it home. I am concerned for believers today who are dillusional. They, like myself and friends, are spiritual babes who look at some spiritual tricks being done today (like the Prayer of Jabez among others) and believe it to be real. Others are thinking that their 3rd “salvation experience” fixed things between them and God. Yet others still perceive what is popular and assume it is right. This phenomena of the dillusional crisis is precisely why Christians need to grow up, including myself. We are so easily convinced of the entertainer’s shenanigans even though it is not based on reality.
Many Christians today, I am grieved to say, have a false idea based on a false reality – and what scares me most is that it often deals with their eternal destiny. It is one thing to be disillusional about a magic trick; it is quite another thing to be disillusional about a matter of eternal consequence. Only those who are grown up can know the difference between the truth and a lie, the substance and a shadow, reality and an illusion. Yet the reverse is happening. We are going even further and further from infancy to an imbecilic status. If this dysfunctional cycle continues, we will forever be wowed by an illusion and have believed a lie. When reality comes, we won’t believe it, for we have perceived reality already by being convinced that the illusion is true, for if you believe it enough, you will convince yourself that it is true.
I don’t want to be a disillusioned believer. I want to be exposed to what is real and not duped by a substitute that is nothing more than a facade. We must be grounded and growing, striving and pursuing. If we stop in this race to be entertained by the sidebar attractions and entertainment, then we will find ourselves gazing into an illusion and end our lives without ever having known the essence of life. Don’t me misled. Refuse to be intellectually and spiritually infantile and deceived. As Paul said, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Cor. 14:20). Let’s expose the lies and acknowledge the illusions for what they are, that in doing so, we and others likewise may be grounded in reality and growing in truth so as to never be dillusional again.
