Spiritual Disenchantment and Delight - Chambers, Oswald
1. Disillusionment and the furnace of disappointment
let no man glory in men. For all things are yours.. . . (1 Corinthians 3:21)
Enchantment in the natural realm means to be taken out of your wits by song and rhythm; spiritual enchantment comes along the line of aggres- sive christian work, meetings, and the contagion of other peoples joy, and it is ensnaring. If we get taken up with salvation or with holiness or divine healing instead of with Jesus christ, we will be disillusioned. We pin our faith to a plan of salvation that can be expressed in words and we glory in it, then we begin to find it does not work and a curious disillusionment begins. It sounds all right, but its fruit is not that which bears a family likeness to Jesus christ, and it causes us consternation if we are conscien- tious and desirous of being all that god wants us to be. Many a man to-day when he is dumped down in the desert 16 has found disillusionment, he is amongst men who do not care for his religion, and he finds there is not the thrill and the joy there used to be; he realises he has been fostering a religious life which is not genuine, and spiritual cynicism may be the result. A cynic spiritually is one who cuts himself off from other people because the enchantment of service and association with others instead of producing real- ity has been engendering priggishness, the attitude of a superior person. Paul continually warns dont glory in men. If you find your spiritual character is disappointing you, you are not developing a family likeness to jesus christ, it is because there is no inner reality. When you come to the furnace of dis- appointment, beware of the swing of the pendulum. Discouragement means the heart knocked out of self-love and my estimate of what god can do. We are also impatient with the things that are neither black nor white, but immensely difficult and perplexing, not easy to decipher. We are made up of a thousand and one springs and the only one who can bring the thing out right is the one who designed it. If a man has never gone through a spell of fanaticism it is because he is not prepared to cut off anything in order to get at reality. It is essential to be maimed for a while in order to develop our life with god (see Matthew 5:2930).
2. Detachment from the fury of desire
for by him were all things created, . . . And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (colossians 1:1617)
Our natural life is a fury of desire for the things we can see. That is the meaning of lust i must have it at once, a fury of desire without any regard for the consequences. I have to be detached from the things i can see and be brought into a living relationship with the creator of those things. If i am taken up with the created things and forget jesus christ i shall find that things disappoint and i get disillusioned. If my body is bossed by personal self-realisation i am defiling the temple of the holy ghost; i may be moral and upright but i have become ruler over my own life. Give up your right to yourself to me, says jesus, let me realise myself in you. He quenches the fury of desire by detaching us from things so that we may know him. In this way god brings us into the fulness of life. The majority of us are not in the place where god can give us the hundredfold more. We say, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, while god is wanting to give us the bush with all the birds in it! It is necessary to be detached from things and then come back to them in a right relationship. A sense of property is a hindrance to spiritual growth, that is why so many of us know nothing about communion with Jesus christ.
When we are detached from things on the inside the fury of desire burns itself out. The attitude is not one born of external detachment, that is atheistic; paul told timothy to beware of those who teach abstinence from meats and marriage. The detachment is not to be that of an aesthete but that which springs from being in perfect communion with god. Our lords external life was so social that the men of his day, who were externally detached, said of him, behold, a gluttonous man, and a wine bibber. They were detached externally, but not in spirit; Jesus christ was detached in his disposition, but not externally. Those of us who are spiritual are hope- lessly blind to gods purpose; the spirit of god is all the time trying to make us detached in mind in order to bring us into real communion with god. God is trying to educate us in inner martyrdom and we wont have it, we get tired of being educated spiritually.
3. Devotion to the face of deity
looking unto jesus . . . (hebrews 12:2)
If i want to see the face of god i must fast from other things and concentrate on god. If in my inner life i am under apprehension by jesus christ for the time being i am out of touch with ordinary things. To fast is not to give up food, but to cut off the right arm, and pluck out the right eye. But that is only a stage, what we are tending towards is the perfection Jesus speaks of in Matthew 5:48ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect (rv ); but in order to get there we have to go the longest way round. The end is a relationship to god perfect and complete in every particular, but it means going through a furnace of disillusionment, and the furnace burns hard. One of the cruellest experiences is the disappointment over what we find in other lives. The last thing we learn is not to glory in men. Jesus Christ never expected from human nature what it was not designed to give; consequently he was never bitter or cynical. Unless our human relationships are based in god they will end in frantic disillusionment. The cause of it is the demand in human nature for satisfaction. No human being can ever give satisfaction, and when i demand it and do not get it i become cruel and spiteful. When we are rightly related to Jesus Christ human love is transfigured because the last aching abyss of the heart is satisfied; but if the relationship with god is cut out our relationship to others is embittered. When once the relationship with god is right the satisfaction of human love is marvellous. Christianity is not devotion to work, or to a cause, or a doctrine, but devotion to a person, the lord Jesus christ. Christianity is a personal relationship which works spontaneously by the moral originality of the holy ghost, there is a perfect gaiety of delight. You could never awaken self-pity in the apostle Paul, you might starve him or imprison him, but you could never knock out of him that uncrushable gaiety and certainty of god. A khamseen17 wind knocks us out! Paul refused to take anything or anyone seriously but Jesus Christ. That is our lords teaching in the sermon on the mount, viz. , be carefully careless of everything saving your relationship to me. We take everything else but that seriously. Our experience of spiritual delight depends upon whether we are get- ting to know Jesus christ better, whether we have the power to make what we know real. If you are going through disenchantment, remember that is not the end, the end is the life which exhibits the spirit of jesus i delight to do thy will, o my god.
