Divine Disillusionment

Truly my soul finds rest in God.

PSALM 62:1

DAVE AND DINA HORNE HAVE AN ADORABLE FIVE-YEAR-OLD daughter named Emma. I was speaking at their church one Sunday, and Emma, along with about twenty other kids in the children’s choir, started off the service.

Between the two services, I saw Emma lining up to sing for the second service. “You were fantastic, Emma!” I said. “You guys sounded like stars!”

Emma smiled, and without missing a beat, she asked me, “Are you gonna hear the second service too?”

Something in the human heart virtually guarantees that we can never be noticed enough. It’s a lust every bit as strong and every bit as destructive as sexual lust—only this lust doesn’t wait until adolescence to awaken. We’re born with this one, and most of us will die with it.

When it’s all about me, I can never be noticed enough, appreciated enough, thanked enough, or complimented sufficiently.

That’s why I believe God has created a divine disillusionment inherent in family life. If we’re honest, most of us will admit we felt disappointed as children in the love our parents gave to us. Even if we had wonderful parents, our hearts’ desire is to be adored, loved, and cherished as only God can love us. No sinful mother and father, with human limitations and their own distractions, can love us so thoroughly that this desire will get fully satisfied.

Disappointments add up until we reach adolescence and finally realize, “I’m not going to be loved by these two people as perfectly as I want to be. What I really need is a soul mate—a boyfriend [or girlfriend]—who will love me the way I really want to be loved.”

For a while, a soul mate’s love may indeed swell our hearts with satisfaction, but in time, that person’s love will also be found wanting. It may take months, or it may take years, but eventually, this soul mate—like our parents—will fail to love us like we really want to be loved.

This will lead us to the third and, I hope, final stage of the divine disillusionment process: we’ll think, “I’ll have a baby and be such a wonderful, fantastic parent that this child will finally love me like I want to be loved.”

At least our method is a little less selfish in this latter stage. We realize we have to give in order to get, but at heart it is still narcissistic, self-centered, and demanding, and it still remains unfulfilled for a very simple reason: if our grown parents couldn’t love us like we wanted to be loved, and if our twentysomething soul mate failed to love us as we crave to be loved, why in the world would we expect babies or toddlers to be able to love us this way?

I believe God allows us to go through these three stages, as he patiently waits for us to finally throw our contentment and our need to be loved in his direction. God waits as we put our hope in our parents—and we get disappointed. God is patient as we place our hope in a romantic attachment—and we become frustrated. God looks on with forbearance as we throw our hope into intimacy with our children—and then we become tired. All the while he waits for us, quietly whispering, “What you’re looking for is me. I’ve been here all along. Put your hope in me.”

If we don’t allow this divine disillusionment to push us in God’s direction, we’ll usually shoot off into the universe of substitutions. We may contemplate an affair, going back to the soul-mate line of thinking. Or we may place our hope in something beyond relationships—power, prestige, fame, vocational accomplishment, or some political cause.

As parents, we’ve been through these first three plateaus. God has been patient with us as we looked elsewhere—but now let’s turn our attention to him. It’s time we realize our delight depends on his favor. Our hearts will feel satisfied only with his love. It’s time we stop blaming our parents and our spouses and our children for not noticing us enough, loving us enough, complimenting us enough, appreciating us enough, and supporting us enough, and instead ask God’s forgiveness for not looking to him for soul satisfaction.

Consider King David, so ignored by his father that he wasn’t even initially presented to Samuel as a possible replacement for Saul; so despised by his wife, Michal, that she compared him to a “vulgar fellow” (2 Samuel 6:20); and so ill-treated by his sons that one challenged him for the throne and even attempted to kill him. In the end, David found his rest in God. He said in verse 1 of Psalm 62: “Truly my soul finds rest in God,” and in Psalm 63, David beautifully and poetically poured out his devotion to the only one who hadn’t disappointed him:

You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water. . . .

Your love is better than life. . . .

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; . . .

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you;

your right hand upholds me.

PSALM 63:1, 3, 5, 7–8

When you read the words of David in Psalms 62 and 63, you are reading the words of a satisfied man. He sought validation in his parents—and he got ignored. He sought it in his wife—and he was despised. He sought it in his sons—and he was betrayed. He finally sought it in his God, and he found a love he describes as “better than life.”

Consider this week whether you’ve asked your parents, your spouse, or your children to be a God-substitute. Scorn the futility of putting your hope and your soul’s desire in other sinful people. Laugh at it, and, like David, turn your affection to the only one who will ever love you as you long to be loved. Then you will be free to focus on loving instead of being loved. You will be armed with the delight that the one who knows you and understands you more fully and deeply than anyone else is the one who is most interested in you and who will always, without fail, be there on your behalf.

If you ask more from your marriage than God designed it to give, it is not your marriage’s fault when you become disappointed. If you ask your parents or your children to be what God never designed them to be, it is not your parents’ or your children’s fault if they fall short of your expectations.

This week, let’s release our loved ones from the desperation that comes from spiritual isolation, and instead let’s begin building a life of devotion that will free us up to love instead of being chronically disappointed, to encourage instead of nag, to lift others up instead of burying them with our idealistic expectations. Let us find the path of David, who testified, “I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods.”

Heavenly Father, today we celebrate the fact that you are enough. You have loved us and will love as no one else ever has or ever will. Let us place our hope and find our happiness in you. In Jesus’ name, amen.