A few moments ago I performed for you a very poor illusion. My attempt was to so distort your perception of reality that you would believe with your mind that I had actually caused the band to disappear. I, however, am not an illusionist. Neither my techniques or presentation were convincing enough to cause you to abandon reason and actually believe something that wasn’t true. Some of you have probably seen a good illusionist perform his tricks, and have been amazed at how he or she was so masterfully able to convince you that something was true, when in reality, not only was it untrue...but it would be impossible for it to be true. This, according to our dictionary, is what an illusion is. It is an erroneous perception of reality.
The ancient philosopher Plato helps us to understand the power of illusion in one of his greatest writings; a piece called “The Cave.” In this story, there is a whole community of people who are chained together in a dark cave, unable to leave. They have spent their entire lives in this cave, having never seen the outside. There are fires in the cave that cast their shadows upon the walls of the cave. This is all they know. This is their world. To them, the only world that exists is a world of darkness, the flickering light of fires, and shadows on a wall. One day one of the men manages to escape. He finds the mouth of the cave, stumbles into the bright light of day, and stands in shocked amazement at what he sees. Sunlight, trees filled with leaves blowing in the wind, grass to walk on, birds flying through the air, a whole new reality that, until now he couldn’t even have imagined. The sounds of this strange new world overwhelm him; birds that sing, frogs that croak, the crunching of leaves and sticks under his feet as he walks.
On the verge of sensory overload, he looks around and sees that this beautiful new world stretches on forever as far as the eye can see. There are no chains, no boundaries, no perpetual darkness, there actually is more to the world than mere shadows. It is a rich, full, breathtaking place teeming with life. He couldn’t wait to rush back to the cave and tell everyone what is out there, anticipating the joy and tears of gladness as they threw off their chains and rushed out of the cave. But upon returning to the cave, and telling the story of what he had just found, the rest of the community ridiculed him. They thought he had lost his mind. Considering him to be insane, and possibly a danger to the community, they decided to kill him. After all, they couldn’t tolerate someone filling their minds with false hopes. The one who knew the truth was killed, and the rest of the community went on confined to the darkness, misery, and captivity of their erroneous perception of reality. They settled for existing within the confines of an illusion, while a glorious reality was just outside the cave
Though this story is a piece of fiction emerging from the mind of Plato, if you think about it, the human race is, in fact, living this story. Throughout the millennia of human existence, our species has been figuratively living chained in a dark cave with an erroneous perception of reality. Many have escaped the cave, discovered the true reality, and rushed back to tell our companions. Some are seen as a threat and murdered. Most are simply ignored. Many have actually succeeded in convincing some to throw off their chains and leave the cave.
As we begin our series of messages through Paul’s letter to the Romans, we begin with the first three chapters in which we discover that humanity has been presented with an illusion, an illusion so grand, so convincing, that the entire human race abandoned reason, exchanged the obvious truth for a clever lie, and was swept into a stream of existence filled with filth and stench, eventually carrying us into the murky waters of an inescapable sea of depravity and eventual death.
We weren’t always in this stream. Before there was death, there was life. Before there was depravity, there was purity. Before filth and stench there was awe-inspiring beauty. Before the darkness of deception, there was the brilliance of truth. And it’s in the brilliant light of truth that the human story began; a truth that is available not just to a select few, but a truth that is clearly available to every creature that possesses the power of reason. After introducing himself to, and greeting the Christians of Rome, Paul begins his letter here, introducing us in chapter 1, verses 18-20 to the stream of truth that we chose to leave so long ago.
But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, evil men who push away the truth from them. For the truth about God is known to them instinctively; God has put this knowledge in their hearts. Since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made, and have known of his existence and great eternal power. So they will have no excuse [when they stand before God at Judgment Day].
Throughout the history of mankind, people have gazed up at the starts and felt somewhere deep inside that they couldn’t be an accident, rather the creative work of some all-powerful being. Even Stephen Hawking, the greatest physicist of our time admits in his theory of the big bang that “One could still believe that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang. He could even have created it at a later time in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang.” Great scientists and philosophers through the ages freely admit that one cannot look at the precision and complexity of everything that is observable and deny that a divine intelligence had to be at work.
Not only can any human being see the existence of God in creation, but we can see the incredible love and care that He has for his creation in the way he cares for the birds of the air; providing food and shelter, and programming into their instincts migratory patterns and breeding habits that confound scientists, to ensure the most favorable conditions for survival. When an individual must stand before God and be sent away to eternal separation in hell, it will not be because they were ignorant of God. God has so graciously revealed Himself so clearly to all of humanity that no one will ever be able to place any hope in this excuse. We are not saved by simply acknowledging God in creation. We are saved as we respond to the message of Christ. But God is always faithful in giving more truth when we respond to the truth that He’s already revealed. No, if a person is eternally lost, it will be because they chose to follow the illusion and be swept into the stream of ungodliness. Paul describes it this way in Romans 1:25.
Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things.
What is the illusion? The illusion presented first to Adam & Eve, and then to every human down through the ages, is that God is not the only one worthy of our worship. In fact, God may not have our best interests in mind. Therefore, since God’s character is questionable, we are to some extent on our own and should even seek other gods to worship who may fill in the gaps where Yahweh God falls short. Remember the garden? It’s our first presentation of the illusion. The truth was clearly seen and acknowledged by humanity, until the evil magician, the enemy of God presented them with an erroneous perception of reality. His first tactic was to cause them to question their ability to hear from God clearly. “Did God really say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” The next facet of the illusion was to cause them to doubt the truth of what God said, “You shall not surely die!” Next was the convincing that God’s motives are questionable. “God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be open and you will be like God.” And at that moment, they chose the illusion, abandoned reason and believed something that wasn’t true. Eve’s worship shifted from the worship of the Creator to the worship of a part of creation that she saw as “good for food, delightful to the eyes, and desirable because she thought it would make her wise.”
In my teenage years, I would frequently go canoeing with friends down the Current River over in Missouri. There are places along the river where the current is extremely strong, so strong that you cannot swim against it. Almost every time we went, I would at some point fall out of the canoe. Don’t ask me why. Once you’re in the water...you are swept away very quickly. You are at the river’s mercy and it will take you wherever it wants, sometimes to places filled with danger that you don’t want to go. The stream of illusion is the same. Once we have begun to worship the creation of God rather than the God of creation we are very quickly swept away into deeper and deeper, more and more dangerous places. Paul paints for us a picture of this stream and it’s ever-increasing danger; this stream that leads us further and further into depravity.
Rom 1:21-32
Yes, they knew about him all right, but they wouldn’t admit it or worship him or even thank him for all his daily care. And after awhile they began to think up silly ideas of what God was like and what he wanted them to do. The result was that their foolish minds became dark and confused. Claiming themselves to be wise without God, they became utter fools instead. And then, instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they took wood and stone and made idols for themselves, carving them to look like mere birds and animals and snakes and puny men.
So God let them go ahead into every sort of sex sin, and do whatever they wanted to-yes, vile and sinful things with each other’s bodies. Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things.
That is why God let go of them and let them do all these evil things, so that even their women turned against God’s natural plan for them and indulged in sex sin with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sex relationships with women, burned with lust for each other, men doing shameful things with other men and, as a result, getting paid within their own souls with the penalty they so richly deserved.
So it was that when they gave God up and would not even acknowledge him, God gave them up to doing everything their evil minds could think of. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip.
They were backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning and continually being disobedient to their parents. They tried to misunderstand, broke their promises, and were heartless-without pity. They were fully aware of God’s death penalty for these crimes, yet they went right ahead and did them anyway and encouraged others to do them, too.
We follow the illusion and enter the stream of ungodliness quite simply by failing to honor God as the one worthy of worship; being thankful for his daily care. Once this becomes a pattern, we begin to think silly things and construct foolish philosophies about God. This brings confusion, a darkening of our understanding, a fading away of what we thought was true. Because our perception of God has become distorted, we find other gods to help us make sense of things; gods like success, pleasure, possessions, power. Out of this arises our propensity for sexual sin. Pleasure becomes the aim, the goal in life that must be achieved at any cost. Because of the addictive nature of physical pleasure, we find ourselves needing more and more perversion to achieve the same level of physical satisfaction. By now we’ve totally discarded God from the picture and God turns us loose, sets us free to sin all we want. From here arises all of the most vile expressions of human nature: greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip. We find ourselves becoming backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning. Instead of hearing and responding to the truth we TRY to misunderstand. We break promises. We become heartless, and have no pity for anyone. By the time we’ve reached the end of this horrible stream we’ve become people who have absolutely no concern for what punishment may await us for our lives, and we even find ways to drag others into evil with us.
By now you may be thinking, “But I’m not like that, I’m a good person, I don’t do those things.” In one sense, we human beings are an unfortunate species. One man, Adam, followed the grand illusion and as a result plunged all of humanity into this stream. You have no choice. You were born in the wrong stream because of your father Adam. But you look at your life and maybe you don’t see murder, or gossip, or sexual perversion. But you need to understand that you were born in the stream that flows through all of these destinations. This list of human evil is a description of the propensity of every human heart. In his letter, Paul explains in chapter 2 that absolutely no one is exempt from the human propensity for evil. You may not see yourself as a breaker of promises today, but stay in the stream long enough and it will carry to that place. You may not be an adulterer today, but stay in the stream long enough and it will carry you to that place.
The illusion was a masterpiece, plunging all of creation into a stream with a current that is far to swift, far too powerful for any of us to escape. If you’re in this stream you will never be able to reach the shore, you will never be able to swim against it, you are in constant peril as you are swept away through ever-deepening places of gross sin to certain death. I remember those swift currents in the river in Missouri. Once you fell out of the boat, your safest bet was to stop fighting. Don’t swim against the current, don’t thrash in the water; your best chance for escaping was to rest and watch for your friend to steer the boat to you, reach for your hand, and pull you out of the water.
If you are one who has rejected God and you want out of that stream, rest. If you are one who feels that God has rejected you and you want out of that stream, rest. If you have followed the illusion and are living a life drenched in sin and love for this world and you want out of that stream, rest. You will never fight your way out of it. But Jesus Christ, the one who walks on water and tells raging seas to shut up and be still is already with you in the stream. And just as he lifted a sinking Simon Peter out of the water he will lovingly take you by the hand and lift you out of the stream, bathe you in his goodness, and lead you to the banks of the River of Life. All you have to do is reach out your hand and ask.
For those of you who’ve already experienced the forgiveness of Christ, you are not immune to the illusion. The enemy will keep it ever before you, always hoping that you will rejoin him in the stream of ungodliness. He’ll give you the illusion that true fulfillment will rest in your ability to earn more money and buy better things. He’ll give you the illusion that maybe you don’t need relationships with other believers, but you can be a fine Christian on your own, in isolation. He’ll give you the illusion that to be a good Christian you have to follow rules like reading a certain amount of scripture everyday, or praying for a certain length of time everyday. He’ll give you the illusion that this world has a lot to offer, you can have the best of both worlds, a little religion here, a little of the world there.
Perhaps most effective illusion that he’ll present to you will be the illusion that God is disappointed with you, angry with you, tired of your failures, sick of seeing you constantly crawling back to him for forgiveness. If he can convince you of this distorted perception of reality he will have succeeded in keeping you distanced from God out of a sense of shame. Please don’t believe this illusion. The reality, the stream of truth is this. If Christ has lifted you from the stream of ungodliness, bathed you in his goodness, and led you to the River of Life you can go to be each night with the assurance of Zephaniah 3:17.
"For the Lord your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty Savior. He will give you victory. He will rejoice over you with great gladness; he will love you and not accuse you." Is that a joyous choir I hear? No, it is the Lord himself exulting over you in happy song."
