A guest post from Toby Kurth, pastor of Christ Church San Francisco:
Coming face to face with reality is not a bad thing. We live in a world of facades, where truth can be very difficult. Dealing honestly with reality can be a challenging thing for all of us. That is one of the reasons I really enjoy reading Nelson Mandela. His honesty and humility is striking to me. I read a line from Mandela this week that reminded me of what the Apostle Paul is doing in his first letter to the Corinthians. “The process of illusion and disillusionment is part of life and goes on endlessly.” The illusion of how things were or how he thought they would be versus the reality of how they actually were. Reading that line led me to the conclusion that it is ultimately a good thing to be disillusioned. When you are disillusioned it means that you are no longer believing something that was only an illusion anyway.
Disillusionment is a gift from God.
In many ways, Paul’s goal in his letter to the Corinthians was to disillusion them. They thought they were spiritual and wise. They thought things like prejudice and greed were okay. They did not see any conflict with being united to Christ and divided from each other. The Christianity they were living was not really Christianity in so many ways. It was an illusion of their own making. It was disconnected from the Apostles’ teaching. It was disconnected from the foundation that Paul had laid in Corinth which was the person and work of Christ. They thought they were building well, but Paul showed them that they were not. The Corinthians needed to be disillusioned. They needed to make a break from the way they had been living and turn towards the way that Christ called them to live.
The Corinthians needed to be disillusioned so they could build in the way God was calling them to build. Faith is not believing an illusion. It is trusting in a real Savior. God’s grace brings us to reality by showing us that we cannot do anything without Christ’s power at work within us. We need Christ. As with the Corinthians, I am confident that many of us have areas of our lives where we need to be disillusioned. Where we need to be brought face to face with reality. Not so we can feel bad about ourselves and grow bitter or discouraged, but so God can build us up. Grace begins with reality and seeing things as they are often begins with being disillusioned.
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