VALUABLE ILLUSIONS [Sat, 11-22-25]

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—VALUABLE ILLUSIONS [Sat, 11-22-25]

 

Illusions are good. Delusions not so much.

An illusion is when you pretend to be Meadowlark Lemon while you’re shooting hoops in the barnyard. A delusion is when you think you are Meadowlark Lemon. Or Christ. Or God, when you’re only the president.

Don Lemkau was the Minister of Visitation at Charleston [IL] Wesley UMC when I became Directing Minister there. I was 42. He was 72.

“The problem with middle-aged people,” he said to me, “is that they think they’ll never get old. But everybody gets old.”

I believed him. I knew I would get old. Now, though, now that I’m older than he was then, a whole lot older, I don’t just believe, I understand. I’m still sort of mad at him, though.

I mean, why did he bust my bubble, take away my illusion of eternal youth?

I’ve never understood the people who want to disillusion younger people about what will happen to them when they get older. I am especially irritated at older people who tell children how bad it will be “in the real world.” Okay, they’re correct, but why destroy the present with fear of the future? The real world is whatever your world is now. That’s where you have to live. And being able to live in the present real world sometimes requires some illusions.

As Jesus said, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” [Mt 6:34]

No, I’m not talking about lies, like saying “It’s okay” when you know it’s not okay, or the lies of omission, like refusing to tell someone that the doctor has said they’re going to die.

I’m talking about illusions like the one I told Kim Wagler, my first cancer nurse, during my first week of chemo. “I’m just not the kind of guy who gets side effects,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I really believed it. And even though I was spectacularly wrong, it kept me going in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Old people do a lot of denying. We think the time will never come when we can’t walk, or drive, or eat. But reality says all those unpleasant things are very close to a time when they can happen.

Especially dying. Lots of denying there. We can’t imagine a world without us. We all assume we’ll live forever, that this “one person-one death” scheme will be suspended in our case.

I am beyond denial. I have made my peace with death. I intend to go out in a blaze of glory, facing down the terrorists who have invaded the hall where I am receiving the Nobel Prize for the advances I have made in both narrative theology and quantum field theory. If you don’t think that’s an illusion, keep it to yourself.

John Robert McFarland