Predictable Disillusionment

Phillip read this excerpt from an ESPN article by Chuck Klosterman today in church. It really did strike me as profound enough that I rushed right home and looked it up. I'm posting it now before I forget where I found it.

In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election, and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings, and everybody cried for two months. And then Enron went bankrupt, and the U.S. started acting like a rogue state, and "The Simple Life" premiered, and gasoline became unaffordable, and our Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico, and we reelected the same president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and three Oscars for an especially bad movie called "Crash."

Things, as they say, have been better.

I'm only 33 years old, so I'll concede that my life experience is limited. But the past five years have been an especially depressing stretch to be an American, and I don't think many people of any age would disagree with that sentiment (except for maybe Kelly Clarkson ... things seem to be working out OK for her). If it's the era of anything, it's the Era of Predictable Disillusionment: a half-decade in which many long-standing fears about how America works (and what America has come to represent) were gradually -- and then suddenly -- hammered into the collective consciousness of just about everyone, including all the people who hadn't been paying attention to begin with.

The question then for a Sunday morning audience is how do we exist as people of faith in an "Era of Predictable Disillusionment"? How do we stand as witnesses to something we hold as truth with a big T in a world conditioned to disbelief and disillusionment? What do we do with our hope that others will get what we're getting out of belief?

Phillip, because he was doing the preaching and because we had all dragged ourselves out on a Sunday morning to hear him say something to make us feel better, would most predictably have to follow these questions up with something about Jesus and something about the Holy Spirit. He did that, of course, but I wasn't really paying attention by then being still preoccupied with "Predictable Disillusionment." And he's right, of course, in whatever it was he said about Jesus and the Holy Spirit while I wasn't listening. That has to be the answer to people of faith in this era, however we want to label it. We've got nothing else. The questions remain enormous. There's no logical evidence that in an us v. them scenario we even stand a chance. There's no logical evidence that in a humanity v. postmodern society scenario humanity even stands a chance.

It's just sad, and it's overwhelming, and I, along with (I suspect) most Christians, am just as vulnerable to disillusionment as anyone else.

At some point this year I saw a sign in front of a church that said, "Instead of telling your God how big your storm is, try telling your storm how big your God is." It's a rip off from one of those popular Christian motivation books, but since I can't remember which one I may have been better off not to even mention that part. :)

It's true that concentrating on your source of hope rather than on your problem is the first step to overcoming any obstacle. I believe that with everything in me.

And here's where I find hope--People untimately want something to believe in. They want something they can trust. They want faith, hope, and love to exist in large and real ways in their lives. They may not know that's what they want, and they may not immediately see how they can have something real in their lives that isn't itself just another illusion and therefore another risk of disillusionment, but in their hearts they want to believe in something. That's just how people are built.

People over 17 eat at McDonald's only because it's cheap and convenient, not because they like it. People feed on steady diets of negativity, despair, disdain and disbelief because they are easy and pervasive, not because they're enjoyable.

All of this is just to say that though I do not have answers I did hear enough of what I wasn't listening to this morning to agree and to hold out some hope that with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit there is a way to make a difference in this confused and skeptical world of ours.

And all God's people said Amen.