Disillusionment

"So surely we must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and,

if we are very fortunate, with ourselves." ~ Diederich Bonhoeffer

In the Spring of 2020, I came across this quote by Diederich Bonhoeffer about disillusionment -- with others, with the church, with one's self. I was at the beginning of the darkest, most painful time of my life. I didn't know it at the time, but that chapter -- that cycle -- would last about three and a half years, and would include multiple cascading crises that would bring me face to face with everything I feared, with everything I had tried so hard to avoid, and would force me to surrender almost everything I thought I knew about myself. To use the language and imagery of the Christian tradition, it was a period of crucifixion -- it felt like dying. It felt unsurvivable. In Bonhoeffer's language, I was profoundly disillusioned with myself. And for a long time, it was hard to understand how I should consider that to be "fortunate", as Bonhoeffer insisted. In addition to my own disillusionment, of course, I lived alongside the profound disillusionment of others in me -- of family, friends, colleagues. All of that disillusionment manifested in me as shame, guilt, anxiety, and just a searing, soulful pain the like of which I had never before experienced.

Gradually, as the multiple crises unfolded, I found myself deeply disillusioned by the church -- in my case, The Episcopal Church, my particular band of what Bonhoeffer calls "Christians in general." I had spend 30 years of my life in service to that church, and while I had horribly and painfully betrayed their trust, I had deluded myself into believing that the church was, fundamentally, a community committed to facilitating the healing of people and of the world. I foolishly believed that while the church would appropriately need to hold me accountable for my financial misconduct, it would, at the same time, be interested in my healing, my redemption, my recovery. What I lived through, however, was the church's progressive abandonment of me and of my family. We were quarantined, contained, set aside, and for the most part, cut off from the community. I was left to figure out how to find healing myself -- there would be no real help from the church to facilitate that healing. Its ministrations were not to be offered to the likes of me.

Finally, there was that third disillusionment of which Bonhoeffer speaks: the disillusionment with others. I painfully found that most of the colleagues with whom I had worked over the years simply vanished. There were a very few who dared to reach out to me, and I was very grateful for that. But for the most part, there was just silence. Most all of the relationships that had made up the substance of my daily and weekly life were gone. People whom I had thought would be there simply were not. I had the sense that so many people just decided to keep their distance.

Naming these disillusionments -- particularly with the church and with other people -- is difficult. About a year ago, I published a blog piece that talked at length about my deep sense that the church, in dealing with me, had completely lost sight of the values it proclaimed. Its response to me was rooted, ultimately, in institutional concerns based on a secular corporate model rather than being rooted in the mystery of Christ and all that Jesus had taught about accountability, mercy, forgiveness, healing, and restoration. Some did not receive that blog post well. One person characterized it as me blaming every level of the church for all of my problems. I have taken down that post, and I want to be clear that I do not blame the church for all of my problems. I am the person responsible for my problems, and no one else. However, I do believe that as I should be held accountable for my actions and failures, the church should also be held accountable for its response to them. It is not about avoiding blame or responsibility -- I accept both fully.

I have had to accept a great many difficult truths these past three years -- about myself, about others, about the church. There were things about myself I could not face, and the crises of these years has forced me to face them. There were things about some of my closest relationships that I could not face -- but not facing them was no longer an option. And there were things about the church that I ultimately had to accept, hard as it was to do so.

In the end, at time of my greatest need, I did not experience the church as the community of grace, love, and healing that I believed it to be. In the end, it is an institution which is trying to survive in an age when institutions in general are struggling, and religious ones in particular. The church's chief concerns are largely institutional in nature, driven by the fact that it is largely in survival mode, trying to figure out how to stay alive in an age when most people are no longer interested in what it has to say or to offer.

The thing that is so sad is that things like love, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, acceptance, healing -- these are all things that most human beings long for. It is, I firmly believe, what spirituality is essentially about. The church struggles because most people do not find these things in its congregations. Or, if they do, they soon discover that beneath these bold words is small print they never imagined would be there.