This is a guest post by Lucinda Hancock, who describes herself as a Mormon wife and mother of eight wonderful children.
We are all familiar with illusion as a form of false knowledge. When we discover the false nature of a previously believed illusion, we call it disillusionment. But disillusionment, with its false hope that we can arrive at honest truth by simply not believing, cannot be our final destination. Merely losing an illusion does not constitute finding truth.
I recently watched a sort of interview between two men, Peter and Ray. They debated whether or not God existed. Peter asserted that God does not exist. The final part of their conversation follows.
Ray said:“Peter, could you be wrong about God’s existence?”
“Yes, and could you be wrong about God’s existence?” replied Peter.
“No.” Ray said, unexpectedly.
“Then, I think you’re rather closed-minded.” was Peter’s flustered reply.
I didn’t see how Ray could get past this road-block. But then Ray made this comparison that I will never forget,
“If I said to you, ‘Could you be wrong about your wife’s existence?’ You’d say… ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know her and love her.’” He continued, “I know the Lord and love the Lord, and He transformed my life.”
This was a powerful example to me of the principle of revealed truth. Ray knew God. He could not be disillusioned because his knowledge was based on experiences with God that He could not deny.
There is a critical time when we are confronted with things that seem to contradict what we’ve known to be true. We need discernment to sort out how losing an illusion affects our understanding of other truths. For instance, when a person is young and healthy, death might as well not exist. It seems so far away and often they live life as if they will never die. This is an illusion of immortality. When such an individual’s life is touched by death and its inevitability, it often comes as quite a depressing shock.
As believers, we hold to the truth of immortality. So what is the difference between an illusion of immortality, and the reality of immortality? As it turns out, death is a part of immortality and a vitally important step in the progression of life. But we cannot receive this knowledge by merely juxtaposing our youthful illusion of immortality with the fact that death happens. We have to seek knowledge of unseen things that are in fact real. Life, in this perspective, is just another thing that we give up in order to increase it. It is an amazing truth that our Savior loved us enough to give His own life. But it was not lost, instead it was increased and abundantly shared.
This concept of love powerful enough to demand our all leads me to another sometimes painful disillusionment. In “For the Beauty of the Earth”, we sing in gratitude “for the joy of human love”. But what is love? I think we all can see that the world has been mixing and substituting false ideas into what we think of as love. And this has exposed us to disillusionment on a massive scale. I know for me, sorting out all the messages can be disheartening. I’ve sometimes bought into illusions about the perfect marriage, the perfect family, the perfect life, which has often led to disillusionment. But I think it’s a mistake to allow disillusionment to embitter us and focus us away from the real beauty. It is the adversary who would have us so focused on marital and family hardships… real, heart-breaking hardships… that we forget to seek out the “joy of human love.”
Here I quote Parley P Pratt “It was Joseph Smith who taught me how to prize the endearing relationships of father and mother, husband and wife; of brother and sister, son and daughter. It was from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love. It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase … to all eternity; … I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this grovelling sphere and expand it as the ocean. … In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the understanding also.”
Notice that phrase, “this grovelling sphere”. Elder Pratt certainly knew the pains and disillusionments this world has to offer, but he sought after the higher truths. He uses the words, “prize”, “cultivate”, “refined”, “pureness”. These can give us a sense of how to accomplish true love.
This leads easily into another illusion I often struggle against: That if God really loved me, He would make life easy for me, and then I could truly be happy. The disillusionment comes when things aren’t easy. The danger with this disillusionment is that I could turn away from God, and decide He must not love me, or want me to be happy.
What a gift the scriptures and the accounts of the prophets are. I read that God chastens those He loves. I read that unto whom much is given, much is required. I can view the sufferings of Christ and count it an honor to share in His portion. I can learn real sorrow for my sins.
This leads me to one of the foundational Christian disillusionments. As I’ve gone through life, it has gotten harder and harder to retain the illusion that I am good the way I am. Sometimes I turn to self-improvement. I think “surely self-knowledge will enable me to fix myself and become good, really good, through my own determination.” However, it doesn’t take many repetitions of failure to realize that I simply am not capable of redeeming myself. Then there is the temptation to just give into the disillusionment, and say “I just am the way I am and I can’t change that”. While it is technically true that I cannot do it on my own, the glorious good news is that Jesus Christ has the power and desire to redeem us from sins. He is the rock of our salvation.
So let’s have courage, that when the rains come down and the floods come up, to seek the truth that can only come from God. To borrow some phrasing from Elder Bednar’s talk “Things as they really are”, Lucifer will attempt to substitute the monotony of [illusions and disillusionments] for the infinite variety and beauty of God’s truth.