Let's Dis the Illusions

I have been thinking and processing a lot over the past few of days, following the amazing five days that we had with Wayne last week. 

We took our name gratefully disillusioned from the statement that Wayne frequently makes in his sharing - "We are gratefully disillusioned because we have all had illusions about God that need to be dissed". One of the wonderful aspects of Wayne's gift is his ability to reveal the illusions that we are often living under. 


I shared in the last blog a couple of those illusions, one being the idea that we can successfully live out our Christian life through others, leaders, friends, organisations etc.. when in fact Father wants us to take full responsibility for our own lives and fly our own plane. Then we will have His life to share with others.

Another one is the idea that the institutional church, as many of us have come to know it, is like getting on a 747 and going for a ride. I must say that my experience of the 27 years that I spent in the institutional church was very much as a passenger on the 747. Probably a more accurate description in my case would be a DC3, but you get the idea. 

No one, leaders or otherwise, that I met during those years ever talked to me about the need to "learn to fly" for myself. Neither did they sit down with me to show me now to do it. To be frank, I don't think the people that I was around during that time knew how to do it themselves, ie to live in the Fathers affection, and therefore most of what I encountered was merely religion. When I became a leader, for about 20years of the 27years, I passed on to those around me the same unreality that I was living myself, how sad!! 

Thinking that I can actually fly, while sitting in the 747 is an illusion. Actually learning to fly my own plane (life), daily, in my Father, with Jesus, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,  is the reality that He wants for all of us.

Another illusion that I have been reminded of over recent days is the fact you can only really understand the purposes and heart of God if you are an "expert", the pilot in the 747 illustration. That the bible is so complicated you need to attend a Bible college and do a three year course in Theology before you can really understand it. I read this yesterday by Jeff Turner, and it Dissed that Illusion  :-)

"The Gospel is not so simple that a child can understand it, it's so simple that only a child can understand it. For that reason, Christ declares that we must become as Children in order to experience the Glory of His Kingdom. That being the case, if our theology must be propped up and held in place with scholarly terms, pseudo Greek and Hebrew, textbook gibberish and seminary speak, it cannot be the Gospel. Our theology must be able to survive and not crumble when oversimplified. So much of what we call orthodox, however, turns into absolute chaos and nonsense once simplified into childish terms. 

The point?  God has made it ridiculously easy, we've made it ridiculously complicated...and weird...and downright ridiculous. Let's stick to the simplicity of the Gospel. :)" - Jeff Turner (see Jeff's website)