The Discipline of Disillusionment
by
Oswald Chambers
(1874-1917)

To be disillusioned means that for us there are no more false appearances in life. A disillusioned person, although all he says may be correct, is often cynical and unkindly severe about other people. The disillusionment which comes from God is just as accurate and clear and understanding, but there is no cynicism in it. "But Jesus did not trust Himself unto them, . . . for He Himself knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25).

The discipline of disillusionment brings us to the place where we see men and women as they are, and yet there is no cynicism, we have no stinging, bitter things to say. Many of the cruel things in life spring from the fact that we will suffer from illusions, we are not true to one another as facts, we are only true to our ideas of one another. Everything is either delightful and fine, or else mean and dastardly, according to our own ideas. Jesus Christ is the Master of the human soul, He knows what is in the human heart (see Mark 7:21-22), and He has no illusions about any man.

Few of us believe what Jesus Christ says, we prefer to trust our illusion of innocence. When we trust our own innocence, we enthrone our illusion and discard Jesus Christ, and it is likely that something will happen to awaken us to the fact that what Jesus Christ says is true. If we give our hearts to Him to be kept, we need never know this experimentally. A certain type of innocence is culpable. Innocence is the characteristic of a child, but innocence in a man or woman is culpable and wrong. It means that their own whiteness is so guarded that they are unfit for life. Men and women must be pure and virtuous, and virtue is always the outcome of conflict.

Most of the suffering in human life comes because we refuse to be disillusioned. For instance, if I love a human being, and do not love God, I demand of that man or woman an infinite satisfaction which they cannot give. I demand of them every perfection and every rectitude, and when I do not get it, I become cruel and vindictive and jealous. Think of the average married life after, say, five or ten years; too often it sinks down into the most commonplace drudgery. The reason is that the husband and wife have not known God rightly, they have not gone through the transfiguration of love, nor entered through the discipline of disillusionment into satisfaction in God, and consequently they have begun to endure one another instead of having one another for enjoyment in God. The human heart must have satisfaction, but there is only one Being Who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why He is apparently so severe in regard to every human relationship. He says if we are going to be His disciples, occasion may arise when we must hate both father and mother, and every closest tie there is. Our Lord has no illusions about men, and He knows that every relationship in life that is not based on loyalty to Him will end in disaster.

I shall go softly (as in solemn procession) all my years. (Isaiah 38:15)

A peculiar nobility, a stately element, comes into the life that has had to face death; that man sees things in their real perspective. It is through suffering that we are disillusioned, but selfish suffering does not disillusion. A man may be perfected through suffering or be made worse through suffering, it depends on his disposition. Am I in the place of disillusionment, or have I refused to be disillusioned when God has tried to talk to me through difficulties and in sufferings? If I have, it is a sign that I am still suffering from illusions; I am still culpably innocent. God is not to blame; I am to blame.

The moral caliber of a man shows itself in the way he conducts himself in the shallow things of life. Our lives are divided into two domains, the shallow and the profound. Jesus Christ was considered to be so shallow by the religious people of His day that they said He was a gluttonous man and a winebibber. His was such a full-orbed natural life that no attention was paid to Him, He was easily ignored and made of no account. Men were blind to the real profundity of His life. Our profound, solitary life is with God alone, and we have no business to obtrude it before others, unless God is bringing them there too. The shallow means the actual surface life we all live with one another. Am I prepared to let God dominate both the shallow and the profound?

The test of our spiritual life is how we behave when we ought to be shallow for God. It is easy to behave at a prayer meeting; it takes all the grace of God to behave at a marriage feast. We must not obtrude the prayer meeting conduct into the shallow things. We have to carry out our relationship with God in the shallow things, without any illusions.

No one ever became spiritual without being fanatical for a season. The shallow intercourse of our lives falls away and people object to us, because, if we are right, they are wrong. It is the swing of the pendulum to the opposite extreme of what the life used to be. My "right hand" is the thing that makes me delightful to other people, yet Jesus Christ says, "If your right hand causes you to stumble in your walk with Me, cut it off." The maimed stage is only for a season; the example for a Christian is not a maimed life, but the life of the Lord Jesus Christ (see Matthew 5:29-30, 48).

Thou hast loved my soul from the pit. (Isaiah 38:17)

This is the greatest revelation that ever struck the human life, viz., that God loves the sinner. God so loved the world when it was sinful that He sent His Son to die for it. Our Lord has no illusions about any of us. He sees every man and woman as the descendants of Adam who sinned, and with capacities in our hearts of which we have no idea. Natural ability has nothing to do with fitness for God’s salvation, it may have to do with fitness for Christian work, that is a matter of civilization.

Hezekiah begins to see himself exactly as he is in God’s sight. When once a man has been "undressed" by the Holy Ghost, he will never be able to despair of anyone else. External sins are to a large extent the accident of upbringing, but when the Spirit of God comes in and probes to the depths and reveals the disposition of sin, we begin to understand what salvation is. God cannot take anything from the sinner but his solid sin, otherwise salvation would have no meaning for him (see 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Have I realized disillusionment through salvation? Think of the worst man or woman you know, do you believe that that one can be presented perfect in Jesus Christ? If you do not, it is because you are still under an illusion about yourself, you still have a notion that there is something in your virtues that will save you. There are men and women, such as the rich young ruler and Mary of Bethany, who are utterly unsullied until they receive the Spirit of God, and then a remarkable thing happens—the corruption to themselves of their natural virtues. It is a difficult thing to state because so few try to state it. When someone who is possessed of patience naturally is born again, he becomes impatient; or if someone has been pure and upright and worthy naturally, he may begin to have thoughts of evil such as he never dreamed of before. Our natural virtues break down because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what we once were, remnants of the man God made and sin ruined. Jesus Christ does not patch up our natural virtues. He creates a new man, "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17), and we find that "every virtue we possess, is His alone."

Jesus Christ cannot be spoken of in terms of the natural virtues, as a patient Man, or a pure, noble Man. He is the Man from heaven, the full-orbed Man, and the New Testament says we have to live as He lived. Our old way of reasoning and looking at things must go, and all things must become new. The way we act when we come up against things proves whether we have been disillusioned or not; do we trust in our wits or do we worship God? If we trust in our wits, God will have to repeat the same lesson until we learn it. Whenever our faith is not in God, and in Him alone, there is still an illusion somewhere.

They that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth. (Isaiah 38:18)

Submission does not mean that I submit to the power of God because I must. A stoic submits without passion, that is slavery; a saint sees God’s will and submits to it with a passionate love, and in his daily life exhibits his love to God to Whom he has submitted. The real meaning of submission is seen in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, "If you are rightly related to God, show that relationship to men; submit enough to live it out in your daily life." It will mean that you do not take the law into your own hands, you do not refuse to be hit. You never need be hit or hurt, but every time you refuse to be, your Lord takes the blow. Think of the honour our Lord confers on us; we have the power to prevent Him being stabbed by taking the stab ourselves. "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake" (Colossians 1:24). When someone over-reaches us, every logical power in us says—Resent it. Morally speaking we should, but Jesus Christ says—If you are My disciple, you will go the second mile; immediately we do, men will cast out our names as evil, as He said they would.

Until we are rightly related to God, we deify pluck and heroism. We will do anything that is heroic, anything that puts the inspiration of strain on us; but when it comes to submitting to being a weak thing for God, it takes Almighty God to do it. "We are weak in Him." Some of us have still to go through disillusionment on this line, we have not learned to submit, we prefer to stand on our rights. "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me," says Jesus. Am I loyal to Him or am I clinging to my own rights? Is my tongue God’s, or is there the poison of asps under it?

Therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord. (Isaiah 38:20)

Hezekiah is not lying in a stately armchair with a sentimental atmosphere around him, he is still sick with a boil, but he says, "I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of praise." Praising costs. If you are in the dumps, sing! Sacrifice means giving up something that we mind giving up. We talk of giving up our possessions; none of them are ours to give up. "A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Our Lord tells us to give up the one thing that is going to hurt badly, viz., our right to ourselves.

Jesus Christ taught hypocrisy to His disciples! "But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou be not seen of men to fast". Don’t say you are fasting, or that you spent the night in prayer, wash your face; and never let your dearest friend know what you put yourself through. Natural stoicism was created by God, and when it is transfigured by the indwelling Holy Ghost, people will never think of you. "He must increase, but I must decrease." John is not saying that with a quivering mouth, or out of modesty; he is expressing the spiritual delight of his life. I am to decrease because He has come! He says it with a manly thrill. Is Jesus Christ increasing in my life, or am I taking everything for myself? When I get disillusioned I see Him and Him alone, there are no illusions left. It is a matter of indifference how I am hurt, the one thing I an concerned about is that every man may be presented "perfect in Christ Jesus."

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