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The most cynical people in our society toward Christianity and the church are not just polemical atheists and secular academics. They are also Christians: pastors, seminary students, godly homemakers, and Bible-studying business leaders. Within the ranks of the church there seems to be a growing number who are disenchanted with Christianity and disgruntled with their faith communities. For many young believers, including evangelicals, cynicism is becoming characteristic of a hip new way to be “spiritual.” Disillusionment with God and the church is serving as a rite of passage for a new version of spirituality. Jaded young cynics want to “stick it to the man” and break free from authoritative figures and institutional structures. But what if “the man” is actually God himself, and what if the institution is the church for whom his Son died?

‘Christian’ Cynicism

Cynicism arises from bitter disappointment. Think about those land mines that have suddenly exploded in your life, bursting long-held ideas and expectations into shards and shrapnel. Sometimes the disappointment is less abrupt. Rather than violent collisions, we may imperceptibly ingest some disturbing reality over a long period of time until one day we wake up and wonder how we became so dour and disillusioned.

Disillusionment, however, is actually a gift. To be disillusioned is to have our illusions dispersed. In describing healthy Christian community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote “the sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.” Falsehoods and misconceptions must be exposed and dismantled for a sustainable and healthy faith. So disillusioned Christians may be among the most insightful members of our churches.

The problem is that disillusionment hurts. Consider Saul after the disillusioning experience on the Damascus road when he discovered that he was actually assaulting the God he assumed he was so devoutly serving. Yet those three days of blindness and fasting (days that were surely full of unspeakable dismay) came to an end with the ministry of Ananias—the pain from his collision with a disturbing reality was healed and the church still reaps the fruits today of his faithful service to the gospel.

Shattered illusions can leave our souls brutally injured. When we resist spiritual rehabilitation and restoration, we (often unwittingly) chart a course down dark and cynical paths. Cynicism arises when our brokenness sours into bitterness, when our spiritual wounds become infected. Disillusionment is a gift . . . but cynicism is a sickness.

‘Christian’ Idealism

Cynicism is not the only sickness in the church, however. To an extent, cynicism develops in response to other maladies. I have struggled with cynical attitudes toward the church because of theological shallowness as well as theological arrogance. I have been deeply disturbed over our glaring cultural irrelevance as well as our eager cultural assimilation. Among these misrepresentations of wise, biblical faith, perhaps none is more directly responsible for generating cynicism as the opposite pole of idealism.

“God will never give you more than you can handle.” Some Christians dispense this phrase with such regularity that one would think it comes from Scripture (I think it is actually a distortion of Paul’s words on temptation in 1 Cor. 10:13). The opposite, however, seems to be more biblically true—God at times gives us way more than we can handle in order to drive us into a deeper dependence on him (“. . . we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. . . . But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead”—2 Cor. 1:8-9).

Idealism oozes out of our pulpits in the form of empty platitudes and trite sentimentality. It seeps out of well-meaning lips in hospital rooms and funeral parlors as we stretch for something cheery to say in the face of sickness and death. A great deal of sermon material can only work in safe and sanitized suburbs.

Due to a variety of cultural and socio-economic factors, many Western Christians have anchored their hopes in optimistic ideals that could only come from a God who wields a magic wand and brings a kingdom that strangely resembles the Magic Kingdom. This “Christian” idealism embraces the legitimate biblical realities of triumph, strength, deliverance, joy, and happiness without also embracing the equally biblical (and often more immediate) realities of suffering, pain, struggle, and weakness. By embracing such a triumphalistic understanding of Christianity, we inadvertently populate our pews with jaded cynics, because idealism just does not hold water in this world. Our unrealistic expectations of what it means to live as people of faith in a fractured, dystopian realm bears wind for the sails of many whose faith is on the edge of shipwreck.

The Resurrection and ‘Hopeful Realism’

Idealism is untenable on the dark, eastern fringes of Eden, and the cynics know it all too well. Idealists within the church pretend they have one foot just inside Eden’s door, but the cynics know better. The cynics know that the way back to the Garden is slammed shut. Rumor has it that an angel—not one to trifle with—stands guard. No return flights are available. What cynics do not seem to acknowledge, however, is that the remaking of Eden is on the horizon and in process. The river, the tree, the face of God . . . it will all be there—renewed and re-presented intact and without blemish: “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’ ” (Rev. 21:5). The redemption of all things is both around the corner and underway. Already . . . and not yet.

How can we embrace this eschatological perspective with enthusiasm and certainty? Because of the resurrection of Jesus. His resurrection announces the end of cynicism because it heralds the end of all that makes us cynical. When someone climbs out of his tomb, something is amiss in the world. Especially when the one leaving behind the grave cloths is the Son of God. He tossed a wrench into the world’s machinery. The old age of sin and death, thorns and thistles, disorder and disillusionment—that age entered its dusk on the dawn of the third day. Satan weeps and gnashes his teeth. Death chokes on its own death rattle. And the sweet fragrance of new creation rises from the blank emptiness of Jesus’ grave. Cynicism becomes obsolete in the face of death’s impending death and with the light of new creation shining out in the distance and in our midst.

Rather than idealism or cynicism, we must embrace what my wife calls “hopeful realism.” This is a perspective that embraces the dual realities of contemporary evil and forthcoming redemption. It lives in the tension of a groaning creation and its imminent restoration. Idealists claim that we are in the suburbs of Eden. Cynics claim that Eden is a farce. Hopeful realists claim with joy that a new Eden looms just around the corner and that fresh green sprouts faintly push up through the cracks and crevices even now. If we truly embrace the biblical teaching that new creation is in the works and on the way, then a daring hopefulness will infuse our experience of daily reality, even when that reality is steeped in the broken mess of the old age, kicking and screaming in its waning hour.


Adapted from Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint by Andrew Byers. Copyright(c) 2011. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60615. www.ivpress.com.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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