Cynicism

Diamonds are the hardest substance on Earth, they rate a perfect 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. But on other carbon-rich planets, the jury is still out. That’s because for some 40 years, scientists have theorized that diamond can squeeze into an even harder mineral known as an eight-atom body-centered cubic, or BC8. If true, this ultra-dense form of carbon would likely be found on carbon-rich exoplanets and would have both a higher compressive strength and thermal conductivity than diamond.

As a result of their exceptional toughness and resistance to wear, diamonds have found a wide range of services in various fields and daily life. Saw blades and drill bits with diamond tips may easily slice through stone, concrete, and metal. Diamonds are also essential in the electrical industry because of their resilience and resistance to heat and chemicals. Another use for diamonds is their high electrical insulation which makes it a promising material for improving the reliability of semiconductors. And let’s not forget the romantic side of diamonds. Because of their extreme hardness and brilliance diamonds are prized as jewelry which can last forever.

Simply put, the discovery of a way to make this “super-hard diamond” could be a game changer for a variety of industries. And scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of South Florida using the Frontier supercomputer are researching just such a possible pathway toward creating BC8.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While a diamond is remarkable for its incredible hardness, there is something on earth that is even harder – the human heart. The Bible warns that a hardened heart is a serious spiritual condition that can develop through unrepentant sin, pride, ingratitude, or disappointment. Only God can truly soften a hardened heart, which requires recognizing the problem, repenting of sin, and submitting to God's work in one's life.

The popular Pursuit of Wonder YouTube channel (almost two million subscribers) gives an excellent concise insight on Existentialism. One segment is noteworthy:

Now more than ever we are exposed to a plethora of ideas about life. The Internet has made it so we can consume a seemingly unending amount of content on the topic of living most effectively. However, simultaneously, this access to information has also allowed the consumer to realize just how conflicting most ideas are.

In the West, the popularity of traditional religion (has) reduced as a result. (And) for many, the increasing access to information has revealed that the world is basically without any discernible truth, and most ideas about how to live are inconclusive and unreliable. It is fair to speculate that this could be a major contributing factor to the modern world's increasing levels of anxiety, cynicism, and disillusion.

Choosing between conflicting ideas of how to live has always been an issue for the individual. But in the modern world, where conflicting ideas are constantly smacking us in the face, we can often find ourselves failing in our attempt to find footing in this reality.

At birth it's as if we are all given a slab of clay. We get to choose what to mold it into. However, … there is no right or wrong way to mold the clay. Rather there are endless ways, all equally absurd, all equally meaningless.

You can watch the video here.

A classic example of an almost-conversion to Christ happened to Lord Kenneth Clark, one of Great Britain's most prominent art historians and authors, and the producer of the BBC television series Civilization. In an autobiographical account, Clark writes that when he was living in a villa in France he had a curious episode.

I had a religious experience. It took place in the church of San Lorenzo, but did not seem to be connected with the harmonious beauty of the architecture. I can only say that for a few minutes, my whole being was radiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had ever experienced before. This state of mind lasted for several minutes … but wonderful as it was, [it] posed an awkward problem in terms of action. My life was far from blameless. I would have to reform. My family would think I was going mad, and perhaps after all, it was a delusion, for I was in every way unworthy of such a flood of grace. Gradually the effect wore off and I made no effort to retain it. I think I was right. I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course. But I had "felt the finger of God" quite sure and, although the memory of this experience has faded, it still helps me to understand the joys of the saints.

Where's Susan? That's the innocent question Joshua Rogers's daughter asked as they were reading The Last Battle, the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. Susan is the child queen who helped her siblings save Narnia from the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. However, she is conspicuously absent from an early scene in The Last Battle that includes every character who traveled to Narnia as a child. Rogers writes:

"Daddy, where is she?" my daughter asked again.

"We'll see," I said, with a tinge of sadness.

Although I've read The Chronicles of Narnia dozens of times since I was a boy, Susan's tragic end gets me every time. The book eventually reveals that Susan grows up and outgrows her love for Narnia. We get few details about her until the end of the book, when High King Peter responds to an inquiry into his sister's whereabouts.

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

Susan thought she had become too grown up for thoughts of a great king like Aslan and a blessed land like Narnia and, though she had once experienced it, she left it behind.

In his book The Big Picture, physicist Sean Carroll lays out his vision for what he calls "poetic naturalism"—a view of the world that has no use for a personal God. In the final chapter of the book, Carroll gets personal and writes about his religious upbringing. He confesses, "I loved the mysteries and the doctrine. Going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, trying to figure out what it was all about." But when his grandmother died unexpectedly when he was ten, the pain shook him. He became a more casual believer. Eventually, as he attended college and became an astronomy major, he lost his faith completely.

Interestingly, Carroll says that while his slide from faith to unbelief was gradual, there were two moments that stuck out. The first took place as a young boy. His local Episcopal church made a decision to change small parts of their service. The previous version had too much standing and kneeling, without enough breaks to sit down. So they reduced the up-and-down activity. That confounded the young Carroll who later wrote: "I found this to be scandalously heretical. How is it possible that we can just mess around with what happens in the service? Isn't all that decided by God? You mean to tell me that people can just change things around at a whim? I was still a believer, but doubts had been sown."

The second incident occurred when Carroll heard the song, "The Only Way" from the Emerson, Lake, & Palmer album Tarkus. The song included something Carroll had never heard before: "an unmistakable, in-your-face atheist message." It made him think, for the first time, that it was okay to be a nonbeliever—that it wasn't something he should be ashamed of or keep hidden.

Possible Preaching Angles: Atheism; Unbelief; Doubt; Hardness of heart; Rebellion; Apologetics. In commenting on Carroll's story of unbelief, Christian philosopher Brandon Vogt comments, "What strikes me about these two events, the most notable experiences in Carroll's journey from God to atheism, is how surprisingly shallow they are. I find it hard to believe that a couple of minor liturgical changes and the lyrics to a progressive rock song were enough to decimate a young man's faith. If that's truly what happened, and I don't doubt it did, then he must have had a very shallow and unsophisticated understanding of God. And he doesn't seem to have moved past it."

In an interview with Rolling Stone, singer-songwriter-guitarist J. Tillman (now known as "Father John Misty") was asked: "You were raised in an evangelical Christian household. How did that affect you?"

Misty responded, "I remember asking my Sunday-school teacher who made God. It was the first time I ever saw someone's eyes glaze over and robotically recite something. She said, 'God's always been.' For the Western world, enlightenment is having an airtight answer to a question. That to me is the quickest way to make yourself absurd. I think certainty is completely grotesque."

Misty was then asked: Was there anything valuable about your evangelical upbringing? Misty replied, "I was promised redemption and forgiveness and salvation over and over, but it never manifested in any meaningful way. It was like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. There's something about my writing that keeps looking to that problem."

In 1927, the famous English poet and essayist T.S. Eliot became a Christian and was baptized and confirmed. Prior to his conversion, Eliot belonged to London's Bloomsbury Group, a small, informal association of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of central London. But when news of Eliot's conversion hit the news, the Bloomsbury Group responded with shock and even disgust. The writer Virginia Woolf, the de facto leader of the group, penned the following letter to one of her peers:

I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become a [believer] in God and immortality, and he goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem more credible than he is. I mean, there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.

Comedian Bill Maher has made a career of attacking Christians. In his film Religulous, Maher offered up this complaint of religion in general and Christianity in particular:

The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.

Here's what Psalm 23 looks like when we remove the Shepherd from our lives:

1 my ... I shall be in want.

2 me ... me

3 my soul ... me

4 I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear ... me ... me.

5 me in the presence of my enemies ... my head ... my cup

6 me all the days of my life ... I will dwell

Paul Miller concludes:

We are left obsessing over our wants in the valley of the shadow of death, paralyzed by fear in the presence of our enemies. No wonder so many are so cynical … Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.

At one point in his journey towards Christ, Nathan Foster (the son of author Richard Foster) was living "a ragged attempt at discipleship." He was afraid to share his honest thoughts about God and his disillusionment with the church, especially with a father who had given his life to serve God and the church.

But one day as Nathan shared a ride with his dad on a ski lift, he blurted out, "I hate going to church. It's nothing against God; I just don't see the point." Richard Foster quietly said, "Sadly, many churches today are simply organized ways of keeping people from God."

Surprised by his dad's response, Nathan launched into "a well-rehearsed, cynical rant" about the church:

Okay, so since Jesus paid such great attention to the poor and disenfranchised, why isn't the church the world's epicenter for racial, social and economic justice? I've found more grace and love in worn-out folks at the local bar than those in the pew … . And instead of allowing our pastors to be real human beings with real problems, we prefer some sort of overworked rock stars.

His dad smiled and said, "Good questions, Nate. Overworked rock stars: that's funny. You've obviously put some thought into this." Once again, Nathan was surprised that his "rant" didn't faze his dad. "He didn't blow me off or put me down." From that point on Nathan actually looked forward to conversations with his dad.

It also proved to be a turning point in his spiritual life. By the end of the winter, Nathan was willing to admit,

Somewhere amid the wind and snow of the Continental Divide, I decided that if I'm not willing to be an agent of change [in the church], my critique is a waste … . Regardless of how it is defined, I was learning that the church was simply a collection of broken people recklessly loved by God … . Jesus said he came for the sick, not the healthy, and certainly our churches reflect that.

Spurred on by his father's acceptance and honesty and by his own spiritual growth, Nathan has continued to ask honest questions, but he has also started to love and change the church, rather than just criticize it.

Here's a little experiment: start a sentence with the words "I believe…," and then finish it with something deeply heartfelt. It is impossible to do without feeling uplifted and stirred.

The need to declare our deeply held beliefs is an irrepressible aspect of being human. In the act of defining what we believe, we define ourselves. I am one who can discern what is true and real and noble and bind myself to it. I believe. One of the most flattering things we can do is ask others their opinion, because what they believe matters. …

To be is to believe. One important question to ask myself is, what do I really believe, and what do I think I'm supposed to believe?

In the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Sam is trying to encourage Frodo not to give up. He reminds Frodo that all the great stories are about characters who keep going when it seems too hard. They all find something to hang on to. "And what about us?" Frodo asks. "What do we have to hang on to?" Sam responds, "That there's good in the world. And it's worth fighting for."

That one line undid me. I found myself all choked up without even knowing why. I realized later what it was about those words that moved me so: I believed them without trying. Often—partly because of my job—there are statements that I think I should believe or that I want to believe. Sometimes, because I get paid or applauded for affirming those beliefs, I wonder if I really believe anything at all or if I just talk myself into it because I get rewarded. But my heart said yes with unforced passion to this belief: there is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for.

I believe.

Early in his career, many had hoped A. N. Wilson, a brilliant philosopher, would become the next C. S. Lewis. But as a young man, he began to wonder how much of the Easter story he accepted. By his thirties, he had lost all religious belief and publicly repudiated his Christian faith, becoming an atheist. He soon embraced the role of a harsh, cynical critic of Christianity and any faith in God at all. At one point he even wrote a book claiming Jesus was a failed messianic prophet (2004's Jesus). But on the Saturday before Easter in 2009, he wrote a shocking piece for London's prestigious newspaper, The Daily Mail, in which he shared his experience of participating in a Palm Sunday service. He writes:

When I took part in the procession last Sunday and heard the Gospel being chanted, I assented to it with complete simplicity. My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age. Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block. …

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known—not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die. …

Sadly, [the secularists] have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all. As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat. The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story. J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it. But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives—the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman, or child next to you in church tomorrow morning.

In his book Please Don't Squeeze the Christian, Scott Sernau reflects on the danger of cynicism—especially in the life of believers who claim a "living hope." He writes:

Cynicism kills in the manner of frostbite: the only symptom is a deadening numbness. And even Christians are often tinged with this frostbite. Callousness and doubt numb us to life and joy. We find ourselves leaving the triumphant lyrics of the old hymns on the church doorstep, because they appear hopelessly out of step with the world waiting outside. Our problem is not that we've been taught to question our faith, but rather that we've been taught to reject any answers. Doubt can be a state of mind—or it can be a way of life.

English author H. G. Wells, famous for science fiction novels like The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, once wrote a short story called "The Country of the Blind." It's about an inaccessible, luxurious valley in Ecuador where, due to a strange disease, everyone is blind. After 15 generations of this blindness there was no recollection of sight or color or the outside world at all. Finally a man from the outside—a man who could see—literally fell into their midst. He had fallen off a high cliff and survived, only to stumble into their forgotten country.

When he realized that everyone else was blind, he remembered the old adage: "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Wells writes:

He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. "Look you here, you people," he said. "There are things you do not understand in me." Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them what it was to see.

But they never believed him. They thought he was crazy. The man fell in love with a girl there and the girl's father, Yacob, went to talk to a doctor about him. A conversation ensued:

[The doctor said]: "I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies [his eyes!]."

"And then he will be sane?" [they asked].

"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."

"Thank Heaven for science!" said old Yacob.

Wells goes on to point out that the man would not be allowed to marry Yacob's daughter unless he submitted to an operation that would blind him. So what would the man do? Wells writes:

He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps…

It seemed to him that before this splendour, he and this blind world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit of sin. And the man who could see escaped the country of the blind with his life.

That is where we live—in the country of the blind that is proud of its science, sure of its health, oblivious to the light. It is not only pitiful; it is deadly. Jesus said, "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." Jesus had his own name for "the country of the blind." He called it "the world." In his last words to his disciples before going to the cross, Jesus warned them of the hostility they would face—just as he had—in this blind world. Yet rather than pulling his beloved followers out of this blind and hostile world, Jesus sent his own Spirit into his people to convince this world of its blindness.

This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.

—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717–1797)

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of Words That Hurt, Words That Heal, has lectured throughout this country on the powerful, and often negative, impact of words. He often asks audiences if they can go 24 hours without saying any unkind words about, or to, another person. Invariably, a small number of listeners raise their hands, signifying "yes." Others laugh, and quite a large number call out, "no!"

Telushkin responds: "Those who can't answer 'yes' must recognize that you have a serious problem. If you cannot go 24 hours without drinking liquor, you are addicted to alcohol. If you cannot go 24 hours without smoking, you are addicted to nicotine. Similarly, if you cannot go 24 hours without saying unkind words about others, then you have lost control over your tongue."

I discovered the importance of healthy counsel in a half-Ironman triathlon. After the 1.2 mile swim and the 56 mile bike ride, I didn't have much energy left for the 13.1 mile run. Neither did the fellow jogging next to me. I asked him how he was doing and soon regretted posing the question.

"This stinks. This race is the dumbest decision I've ever made." He had more complaints than a taxpayer at the IRS. My response to him? "Goodbye." I know if I listened too long, I'd start agreeing with him.

I caught up with a 66-year-old grandmother. Her tone was just the opposite. "You'll finish this," she encouraged. "It's hot, but at least it's not raining. One step at a time…don't forget to hydrate…stay in there." I ran next to her until my heart was lifted and my legs were aching. I finally had to slow down. "No problem." She waved and kept going.

Which of these two describes the counsel you seek?

Biologist Richard Dawkins, a vocal atheist and critic of organized religion, inadvertently revealed the lack of certainty that must accompany all denials of God's existence in his 2006 book The God Delusion.

On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is certitude that God exists and 7 is certitude that God does not exist, Dawkins rates himself a 6: "I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."