Wrestling Disillusions

Rocky Balboa told his son, “Life is not about how many times you get hit. It is rather about how many times you get back up to keep moving forward. But be aware, no one hits harder than life.”

The boy in me can’t help but fall in love with this statement. There is something unbelievably inspiring about watching a Rocky movie. It makes me want to work out to ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or sprint a set of stairs just to jump up and down when I get to the top. But do you sense a deeper question to this statement? Is Rocky saying something about who we are as humans or even how we experience life?

Would it be the same to say Rocky is implying that life hits all of us harder than we want it to, and it is fiercer than we anticipated? Is Rocky saying that sooner or later we all wrestle our disillusionment?

Regardless of your thoughts about Sylvester Stallone’s ability to produce movies, there is something strikingly accurate about this quote. Life is hard. Life interrupts our illusion for the reality of our perfect dreams. For Christians, we blame this happenstance on God. God promised us at birth that if we were faithful he would take care of us. And here we stand. Single. Alone. Poor. Miserable. Broken. Empty. Lonely. Jealous. Divorced. Bankrupt. Disenfranchised. Sick. Forgotten. Mediocre. Abandoned. Used. Abused.

We are hurting and God seems absent. Our prayers go unanswered and our beliefs go unrewarded.

At some point or another we all reach this level of disillusionment. God is not what we thought God should be.

Barbara Brown Taylor says,
But down in the darkness below those dreams – in the place where all our notions about God have come to naught – there is still reason to hope, because disillusionment is not so bad. Disillusionment is the loss of illusion – about ourselves, about the world, about God – and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth.
In other words, God does not fit into our preconceived boxes. God is above it. Our thoughts on who God is, for obvious reasons, are purely fictional. The God we used to believe in was a God of parameters – realms of raison d'être that orbit around our personal righteousness and individual successes.

God used to exist for our pleasure. But now our disillusionment has set in and we see that God is not here to serve humanity – humanity is here to serve God.

But who is God?

Sadly, most disillusioned people get to this question and stop. The pain of arriving here causes them to abandon the process altogether. Anger becomes their best defense. “How could we be so gullible?”

My response to this – if this is you – is for you to keep on trucking. Don’t be afraid of your disillusionment but rather own it. Probe it. Listen to it. Question it. Wrestle it. Disillusionment is not half as bad when you’re walking through it, “. . . because the real danger is not the territory itself but getting stuck in it.” (Taylor)

For those who dare to keep leaping after the Light, I submit you will find that what you have lost is not nearly as important as to what is to be found. You will find a God who is alive and moving in this world. God just doesn’t look and act the way you imagined. God is above your imagination. It takes faith to see and hope to feel it.

“For life is not about how many times you get hit, but how many times you get back up to keep moving forward.”

God doesn’t stop you from getting hit. God is in your corner and is preparing you for each round. You have to have faith enough to believe that when you go back out into the ring – God is really with you and you have the strength to wrestle your disillusions. For every time you do, another idol is uncovered and more truth about God is revealed.

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