Welcome to No-Man’s Land
“No-man’s-land” is a rather ominous term used in reference to uninhabitable spaces, such as land between foes, dangerous regions, deserted buildings, or, figuratively, “a state of confusion or uncertainty.” Only recently did I learn that it is also an actual place. Nomans Land, Massachusetts, is a real 612-acre island that was used as a bombing range in the twentieth century.
Both as an address and a noun, no-man’s-land describes territory that is unlivable. One simply cannot stay there (let alone set up a home there) for long.
In some ways, the space between illusion and reality can feel like a no-man’s-land. In between what we thought we knew and what we are beginning to understand, the tension can seem uninhabitable. This is one of the reasons it is so tempting to bail right on the brink of insight and growth.
Avoiding illusions altogether may appear to be a smart strategy, but that state is more uninhabitable than any real or allegorical no-man’s-land.
We are finite beings in relationship with an infinite Creator living out our days on an earth (not to mention in a universe) too complex to fully comprehend.
No wonder we have illusions!
Most are not innately evil.
If fact, most are not even consciously chosen.
While it is possible to create illusions willfully (as when a child asks, “Is it okay if I believe in Santa a little while longer?”) or to suffer from illusions forged via psychological trauma (which is well beyond the scope of my book), the majority of our ideas and ideals form from the mix of what we have inherited, experienced, and studied.
As many have said, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Further, you won’t know until you grow.
Our grasp of reality is ever evolving. For example, if an infant could talk, she might say that “Mom is milk,” and perhaps later that “Mom is hands and eyes.” As a toddler, she could probably describe Mom head-to-toe as a distinct being. Yet she would still spend her life discovering—through hypothesis and correction or confirmation—Mom’s personhood. Even after Mom dies, the child would still be pondering the complex depths of Mom and considering, with her own final breaths, much of Mom as a lovely mystery.
Strictly speaking, the infant’s thought that “Mom is milk” is an illusion—an inaccurate idea. Yet, in all its inaccuracy, “Mom is milk” reflects the infant’s healthy development. From birth to death, life is a continual shedding of illusions. Even spiritually, we awaken to God as children do to a parent. And regardless of how much time we are given on this earth, all that God really is will surely surprise us on the other side.
The apostle Paul acknowledged this reality in his first letter to the Corinthians:
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Personally, though, losing an illusion from a guess is far less painful than losing an illusion from what I thought I knew.
The problem is that we have a tendency to add on to truth by filling in the blank after what we “know in part.” What we assume from what we know—rather than what we actually know—sets us up for the loss of a lot of illusions, especially when we confer upon that added-on assumption the spiritual weight of truth.
Like when we read, “God is love” (1 John 4:16) and then, consciously or unconsciously, add, Which means that . . .
He will protect me/my family from harm.
What is sincerely done in His name will be fruitful.
All who love Him should be able to love each other.
But then, a loved one has a terrible car accident, or we lose money on a risk we took in faith, or someone who sincerely said “I do” is now angrily saying “I don’t.”
The Fall affects us all.
Yet we continue to expect Garden of Eden faith in a Garden of Gethsemane age. And without a framework for processing disillusionment, we treat our add-on assumptions as proof of what we know. So, for instance, if God protects those we love from harm, then He is love. But if loved ones are harmed, then He is not love. This actually gives more power to the add-on than to the truth. We wind up keeping the illusion (I know how a loving God should behave) and dissing the reality (God is love).
Valuing the process of disillusionment, however, does the reverse: it exposes our illusion as too small, too earthbound, and too simplistic to contain a supernatural and infinitely complex God.
If we think of God as the ultimate reality, then faith in God is a continual journey toward what is real. Along the way, life gifts us with opportunities to lose illusions and gain reality—neither as failure, nor as something demonic or punitive, but as healthy growing pains of spiritual maturation.
Which is perhaps why Paul encouraged the early church, “Only let us live up to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:16). What a relief! We do not have to hold earlier versions of ourselves accountable for what our current version barely now knows! Returning to our previous example, we do not criticize the infant for not understanding that Mom is much, much more than milk.
So, if having illusions is natural and if disillusionment is actually an invitation to grow, why are we so tempted to bail in the process?
Reality is a merciful illusion-breaker, but the process can be deeply unsettling. As Gerald G. May insightfully offers, “Since the night involves relinquishing attachments, it takes us beneath our denial into territory we are in the habit of avoiding.”
Resisting the night, we try to push it back with the feeble light of human understanding. Reason desperately attempts to hold faith in place, which is difficult to do when faith is growing. As Kierkegaard said in Sickness unto Death, faith “is precisely to lose one’s understanding in order to win God.”
In other words, our greatest thoughts are still too small.
When in pain, we have to decide what we love more and what our faith is really in. Is our love and faith in God or in our understanding? (The former will always be too big for the latter.)
So, when that strong, loyal father dies suddenly of a heart attack, or a dear friend we have prayed for refuses to seek help, or we walk out of an appointment stunned by a diagnosis, a choice stands before us.
Will we trust God even when we do not understand God?
Are we willing to go without answers in order to go deeper into love?
Or will we label disillusionment a no-man’s-land and bail?
As John H. Coe explains, when faith does not make sense, God is “purging [the believer] and inviting them into deeper fellowship with him.” This process summons us to surrender self. We resist, in part, because we are rather attached to self and its illusions. So, in His mercy and through each night, God invites us further into reality.
He is bigger.
He is better.
He created us to be with Him.
And His companionship is enough, even in the night.
Adapted from The Night Is Normal: A Guide through Spiritual Pain by Dr. Alicia Britt Chole. Copyright © 2023. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
Dr. Alicia Britt Chole is a speaker, award-winning author, and mentor. Her voice cuts through fluff and summons souls to walk with God anew. Alicia holds a doctorate in leadership and spiritual formation from George Fox Seminary and serves as the founding director and lead mentor of Leadership Investment Intensives, a nonprofit devoted to providing customized soul-care for leaders in business and ministry. A former atheist, Alicia has a raw faith and love for God’s Word that hold the attention of saints and skeptics alike. Other works Alicia has written include Anonymous, 40 Days of Decrease, and The Sacred Slow.