Illusions Of Faith

Enculturated delusions. Childhood attachments. These bind people to their narcissism and create vain hopes. These may seem to be very substantial, but they are illusory. Many people in the world today claim to have lost their faith. They improperly placed their hope in infantile comforts. But when in later life they become confronted with their own and others' weaknesses they are no longer able to comfort and reassure themselves with their inadequate images and deluded sense of spiritual peace. And they blame God for this in particular.

Humility is the only cure for this false procurement. Spiritual poverty, emptiness, and total abandonment are the only actions - if they can even be called that - that enable Christians to receive God's presence as a pure gift. These are possible outgrowths of genuine contemplative practise. But they may also spring forth spontaneously from simple spiritual dereliction.