Summary: A study of spiritual disillusionment, proposing that this “night faith” in times of pain may root us more deeply in God and ground us more firmly in reality.

There are few things more emotionally painful than disillusionment with God, others, or even ourselves. A pursuit of what seemed a clear calling of God ends up as an abject failure; a community that began with such warmth and vision becomes toxic; or we realize how flawed our notions of our spiritual progress are when we discover how hard others find it to abide our presence. Sometimes it is simply the profound absence of God after years of a warm sense of his presence, for no reason we can discern.

Alicia Britt Chole proposes that such “night” experiences, as distressing as they may be to us, are not the enemy. In a book that is uncompromisingly honest about the painfulness of such experiences, Chole urges us not to bail on God, others, or our lives. Disillusionment, surprisingly, is a friend. After an extensive study of the word, she personally defines disillusionment as “the painful gaining of reality.”

That’s right. Disillusionment opens our eyes to reality by puncturing illusions we have about God, the world, others, and ourselves–all the ways we have been living in unreality that prevent us from growing into the people God intends us to be, growing in a faith that is resilient, that trusts when it can’t see in the night. When we refuse to bail and believe when we don’t see, we discover love, both that of God for us, and us for God that goes beyond what God does for us.

Having explored the nature of and opportunity within disillusionment, she goes on to explore three forms of disillusionment and how we might respond:

With God. Believing that God is not disillusioned with us. Soaking in scripture (as she does in several chapters). That it consists in honesty and grief. It means exposing the false “if-then” equations in our faith. Tending to our physical health…. And plodding on.

With ourselves. Allow God to be our mentor. Assess our signs for spiritual growth–are they spiritual? View our lives as not a line but a spiral where we come around again and again to the same issues at different points of maturing. Realize that all failures are not sin. Remember that the life of faith is a pilgrimage and not a performance.

With others. Don’t assume that sin is the source. Recognize that our strengths come with shadows. Listen generously. Know when it is not your cow (I loved this one–not all problems are our problems to address). Resist revisionism to explain the pain and love in reality.

Chole enunciates these and other truths in short chapters liberally filled with illustrations. In all of this, her invitation is one to follow Jesus in the night, to not give up but to keep plodding on, allowing the lessons and insights to come as they will.

Don’t stop reading this book at the conclusion. Read the appendices. The first deals with objections based on questions raised to the dissertation version of this book. The second is a table of the times disillusioned appears in translations of the Bible. The third covers related concerns and concepts discussed by a number of contemporary thinkers. This last concludes with these words, as compelling as any in the book:

“Wisdom invites us to recall deeper voices that receive resonance from Eternity. Through history, great thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, and Philip Yancey agree: the purpose of the darkness, the dark night, the absence, and the disappointment is to purify and empower the soul too know a new dimension of intimacy with God.”

Alicia Britt Chole is too modest to add herself to this list but in this well-researched and approachably-written work, she joins these others in inviting us not to “bail” but to believe, to lean into the pain of disillusionment, allowing God to shatter our illusions and lead us into the deeper realities of his substantive, gritty love for us that does not let us go.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. ( )