Is Christian Cynicism a Spiritual Sickness?

We need to have a vital faith that is without illusions.

Cynicism is rampant in secular culture. It also flourishes among Christians. Though there is indeed a great deal of disenchantment with God these days, "Christian" cynicism seems most often directed toward the church. As an untidy conglomeration of imperfect people from all walks of life, the margin for human error in the church is quite high, isn't it? We are a dysfunctional family of sinful siblings, repeatedly failing and injuring one another. Christians must constantly nurse in-house wounds. Thus the descent, whether immediate or gradual, into cynicism.

So many believers have now slid into those dark pits that cynicism is becoming vogue in many Christian circles as a self-identifying trademark of a new spirituality: edgy spirituality of the jaded. Since cynicism is emerging as a hip new way to be "spiritual," religious disenchantment is often hailed as a spiritual virtue.

How do we identify cynical Christians? They would never be caught in public wearing the ridiculous T-shirt they got at that legalistic dating conference from earlier clays in the youth group. Christian cynics would be humiliated if anyone found the old "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelet buried in their desk drawer. They would listen to the Christian pop music radio station only for laughs. They would try to avoid displaying too much emotion during a worship service or answering correctly too many questions at the Bible study, lest they suffer from the dreaded accusation of being "hyper-spiritual."

On a graver note, Christian cynics sometimes delight in watching fellow believers tread on life's landmines, and their flaunted skepticism can even become the means by which the faithful forsake their faith.

For obvious reasons the anti-institutional attitude of cynicism does not comport well with the established church. Cynical Christians are therefore situated on the fringes of Christian fellowship. Their position on the margins allows them to be close enough to the church to (often amusingly) criticize its mistakes while maintaining a degree of allegiance to Jesus (whose harangues against the established religious leadership of his day become favorite Scripture passages). Cynics praise themselves for taking the red pill of "reality," and then they stick it to "the Man" by unplugging themselves from the "matrix" of the institutional church.

But who does the Christian cynic "stick it to" if "the Man" is Jesus himself or the church he died for?

Such questions expose cynicism as potentially misguided and dangerous. Cynics have been wounded, or at least frustrated, and their edgy spirituality is the spirituality of those whose spiritual wounds and frustrations have become infected, when their brokenness has soured into bitterness.

Cynicism is a sickness. To be cynical is to be "contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives." Why is the temperament contemptuous? Because some defining experience usually provides the empirical evidence for becoming distrustful—and it hurts. Some of us, of course, have personalities more disposed to cynicism than others. But it is important to note that full-blown cynicism among Christians toward God or the church is often triggered by some revealing experience or series of events that hurts us and eventually impairs our spiritual health.

We could attempt to define cynicism as an embittered disposition of distrust born out of painful disillusionment. To be cynical is to be spiritually ill. But it is not terminal. Christian cynics, injured somehow in relation to their faith, need not go untreated. Wounds can heal. If preventative measures are taken, the painful disillusionment does not even have to lead to cynicism in the first place.

Pop Christianity and the Gift of Disillusionment

Is all cynicism unhealthy, though? Could there be a form of cynicism that is actually beneficial, perhaps even biblical?

Cynicism has reached epidemic status within the church, but it is not the only illness out there. Many of these other ailments plaguing the church are the very means by which cynics become cynical. The term pop Christianity appears from time to time, usually to refer to the oversimplified theology and the trite sentimentality that is so rife throughout the Western church. This is a populist version of Christianity that is "purged of complexities, nuance, and darkness" and lacking "poetry and emotional breadth." Many illnesses can be identified under the rubric of pop Christianity, to which cynicism has become a common response.

But fighting sickness with sickness will just promote mass contagion. The church is in need of corrective voices, but cynical voices will hurt more than help. Are there alternative responses to pop Christianity that can promote healing in the church? Can we be discerning Christians without becoming full-blown cynics? Is there a way to critique and challenge the church more out of love than out of disgust?

Yes.

As long as pop Christianity is nurtured in the church, then Christians will be inadvertent accomplices in spreading the spiritual sickness of cynicism in our pews (and even beyond into the wider culture). But if we could prevent the disenfranchised masses from plunging into cynicism and actively seek the rehabilitation of those already diagnosed as cynics, then we would secure an army of voices within our own ranks that can provide brilliant insights which, if tempered with love, could possibly lead to the reformation and renewal which the Western church so desperately needs.

This is because Christians who have been disillusioned are among the most discerning people in the church. Disillusionment is illumination. Those moments of painful discovery are revelatory experiences from which others could benefit. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, actually hailed disillusionment with the church as a divine gift. The crushing of unrealistic dreams about God's people (as well as ourselves) is an act of God's grace:

Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and with ourselves …. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.

This great theologian passionately calls us to disillusionment. But for the disillusionment to bear its fruit, we have to embrace it without collapsing into cynicism. When we experience hurtful illumination and resist turning cynical, we may realize that we have been entrusted with a tremendous gift that can be used for the edification of the church. If we can manage to find healing and regain our footing a bit after the rug has been ripped out from beneath us, then we may be used by God to free others from faulty ideas about our faith. Redeemed cynics have much to offer.

The apostle Pau1's revelatory encounter with Christ (Acts 9) disabused him of terrible misconceptions, and the degree to which the church has benefited from that disillusioning experience on the Damascus road is incalculable. Before his disillusionment became salutary, however, he endured three days of blindness. From what we know about Paul's impressive pedigree in Pharisaical Judaism, it does not seem like much of a stretch to suggest that those three days were profoundly miserable for him as the extent of his misunderstandings about God and his faith were exposed. At the height of his religious zeal, he made the shocking discovery that he was violently at odds with the God he thought he was serving. After Ananias's visit, however, he was strengthened and, it would seem, rehabilitated enough to evade debilitating modes of cynicism in his legendary ministry as the apostle to the Gentiles. His disillusionment was a gift, the benefits of which we are still reaping today.

Those prone to cynicism possess insights that the church, sick with populist misconceptions and ridiculous practices, desperately needs. Their voices will only be helpful, though, if, like Paul after his epiphany on the Damascus Road, their wounds can be restored to health. We are in dire need for redeemed cynics to dress their wounds that they may rise up and flourish in the truths revealed to them for the health of the church and for the glory of God.

Rising to Hopeful Realism

Our Bibles are bookended with paradise: creation in Genesis 1-2, then new creation in Revelation 21-22 (cf. Isaiah 65-66). We live in between the reality of the original Eden and the restored Eden. Pop Christianity tends to deny the reality of ex-Eden existence, offering trite and formulaic slogans and clichés that idealize our experience of faith and rightly ring foul in cynical ears. The attitude of cynicism, in contrast, denies the reality that God has promised new creation, that it is just around the corner and that it is making appearances in the here and now through the work of Christ and his Spirit. We need to foster a biblical spirituality that embraces the grim reality of our ex-Eden life along with the joyful reality that God is making all things new. My wife calls this "hopeful realism."

We need to take an honest look at a number of clichés and trends of pop Christianity that fuel the angst and ire of Christian cynicism. We need to identify a number of disappointing "isms" within the church that need reproof, while also considering how cynical responses to those "isms" are also in need of reproof. For instance, anti-intellectualism thrives in many Christian circles. This is unfortunate, but also unfortunate is intellectual elitism, a typical response from many a cynical Christian. The standard cynical approaches are counterproductive.

There are biblical models for expressing corrective voices alternative to the approach of cynicism. Scripture vividly portrays the people of God as a community prone to wander and ever in need of renewal and reform. Scripture also offers guidance on the proper means of promoting that renewal and reform. I'm convinced that those prone to cynicism actually have much to offer the church. But there are alternative models of critique, rather than cynicism, such as the biblical examples of the prophet, the sage, and of those tragic poets behind the biblical lament literature. Since no voice is more pressing to hear than the voice of the One who loves the church enough to die for it, we need to look at how Jesus himself addressed misconceptions and wrestled with his own disappointments with his followers—and also with his Father.

The resurrection of our Lord makes possible for us to embrace hopeful realism instead of cynicism. Paul avoided cynicism (while serving dysfunctional local churches) because of his keen awareness that resurrection changes everything. We may live on the dark, eastern edge of Eden, but new creation awaits, and for the hopeful realists who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it keeps bursting into the present.

Adapted from Faith Without Illusions, by Andrew Byers, chapter 1, copyright(c) 2011. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.

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