“In those latter days, because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many will grow cold.” 

Chesterton said that taking in the news was the very worst way to gauge reality, because the whole point of journalism is to report on abnormalities. There are millions of people who enjoyed their bowl of cereal this morning, but the news reports the two people who choked on their cornflakes. The idea is that, if you watch enough news, you’ll start normalizing the abnormal. You’ll begin to believe that most people choke on their cereal in the morning, when, of course, the opposite is true. Most people don’t.  

Cynicism works in a similar way.  

Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world.” That’s a realistic statement from the most realistic person to ever live. No one is more aware of how bad things really are than Jesus. He is the most realistic person when it comes to wickedness and trouble in the world, and what’s wild is that in the very next breath he’s the most hopeful and encouraging person. It would be easy to read that verse sarcastically, wouldn’t it? Cynicism would tempt us to use a sarcastic intonation, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I mean whatever, if you’re still naive enough to believe in anything genuinely good.” 

How can Jesus be both? How can he be absolutely clear-eyed and realistic about the wickedness of the world, and unironically hopeful and encouraging? By no means is Jesus naive, and yet he manages to escape the trap of cynicism. How? Because he sees the whole of reality in a way we don’t. He’s come from the presence of God to bring a better journalistic word about what is actually normative, and what’s normative is goodness, beauty, holiness, kindness, love, gentleness. From our vantage point these noble things break our hearts because we have become so worn down and wearied by evil; we see them as carrots dangled before our eyes, carrots we can never actually have. At best we talk about them with a heartsick longing, and at worst we scoff condescendingly at them, mocking them because we no longer believe in them anyway. We know better. Life has taught us to know better, hasn’t it?  

But that is a trap. It’s the result of having our vision warped and skewed and overtaken by shadow. In this world you will have trouble, says Jesus realistically. But trouble is not the end of the world. There is some secret Jesus knows. He knows what’s actually normal. The Lord in heaven laughs, because he sees how puny the reign of evil really is, how temporary, how a single breath will blow it all away. There’s simply no contest. The eastern idea of equal opposites barely eeking out a balance between good and evil is ridiculous. When the moment comes and the Lord steps onto the field of war, the war will be over.  

The crucifixion looked and felt so final, so absolute. Jesus’s death would have been cause for cynicism to claim primacy. But the resurrection of Christ makes a greater claim, saying that, no matter how convincing death and sorrow appear, don’t believe them, this vision of God’s light, life, and love triumphing in such a concrete way within the walls of our sorrowing world is what is most real. The word this beautiful resurrection speaks is the truest thing about reality. 

Cynicism and despair are strong temptations in such a broken world. Hope and gratitude are sometimes easy, but very often they are acts of obedience and faith. Hope is often a decision we must make to actually believe what Jesus has said about life, that it is and shall be “very good”. But who hopes for what they already have? We’re told that love hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things, endures all things. Cynicism is a resignation to all the obvious evil in the world, as if it were the main thing, the primary reality. Hope calls us to bravely believe that evil is ultimately untrue. That evil is making an arrogant claim about its own primacy that is false. Jesus bears witness to that lie by being both absolutely realistic about evil, and at the same time keeping his heart open, vulnerable, and hopeful. He can stand with us in clear sight of all the the inevitable trouble of the world, and say, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, take heart, be of good cheer, don’t let your love grow cold, keep going, life is beautiful and good, rejoice always, lift up your hearts, keep thinking about whatever is noble and good, your labor is not in vain, nothing can separate you from the love of God, joy comes in the morning, I’m with you in the valley of the shadow of death, a bruised reed I will not break, I will bind up the brokenhearted, behold I am making all things new, come to me if you’re weary, I will give you rest. Rest from all that has beaten you down to the point that you can’t even believe in goodness anymore. 

The rest Jesus offers is for those of us who, in order to understandably protect ourselves from more heartache, have taken up the cynic’s mantra. What is the cynic’s mantra? It’s this: “If you lower your expectations, you’ll never be disappointed.” Can you hear the hopelessness, the resignation, the despair and overwhelming sadness in it? What does it take to get us to that place? How much love must be withheld from us? How much harm must be done to us? I don’t think we’re born into this world expecting to be dropped, but at some point, if our cries go unheard long enough, we give up on expecting that the hunger and thirst to be held, celebrated, and meaningfully incorporated into a loving fabric of belonging is even worth the trouble of hoping for. Hope, if we’ve come to that sad conclusion, is just a reminder of what we’ve come to believe we can never have. Another dangling carrot, a trap door like all the others, ready to fall out from under us. 

Perhaps the most frightening thing about cynicism is that, like many of our unhealed wounds, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and a habit that tends to create a vicious cycle of self-sabotage. Someone told me once that what isn’t redeemed repeats. Wounds that don’t get the love and care they deserve, don’t remain neutral or benign. They continue to cry out for help, because the loss or the deprivation was real, which means the need for protection and love was real – and it still is. But if we’ve lost hope, we’ll spend a lot of energy protecting ourselves against it, typically by minimizing the good things we actually long for, that we actually do need. We may long to be enjoyed for our playfulness, but if we were punished for it by over-serious parents, we may repeat that punishment within ourselves and towards others. We lose our ability to enjoy the things we desire, because we can’t bear the pain of endlessly deferred hope, so we sabotage those good things in order to keep our expectations low, so we won’t be disappointed. 

To lay more guilt and shame on the shoulders of friends around us who’ve lost hope is not my point. Lack of love is what has made it so hard to hope. How does Jesus respond to those of us caught in this cynical trap? There’s a moment in Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well that struck me just this week that I think has something to say about this. 

Once Jesus has told her something that there’s no way he could have known (about her five husbands and the sixth she’s living with) she realizes he’s some kind of holy man. I think at this point she’s concluding that she’s being set up. A Jewish holy man has come to Samaria to dangle a carrot, then snatch it away. So she decides to go ahead and get it over with. She thinks she knows what’s coming. So she says, in essence, “Okay, holy man, where’s the right place to worship? Our mountain or yours?” She knows the answer. He’s a Jewish holy man, the only thing he can say is “at the temple in Jerusalem.” And she knows that’s impossible for her, a Samaritan woman with her track record. She’s trying to sabotage the situation, because her expectations have been shaped by the cynicism that, thus far in her life, has been necessary to survive all the disappointment she’s experienced. She’s saying, “Don’t waste your time or mine, holy man, yank the carrot, let’s get this over with. Don’t toy with me as if things could actually change, as if I could ever have access to God’s love. I know better than that.” 

But Jesus, as usual, brings a whole new possibility to the table. He says God isn’t all that interested in a particular mountain, here or there. Something different is happening, and rather than people having to go to some certain place to meet him, he’s come to meet them wherever they are. Like, at a well at noon in Samaria, for instance. This carrot isn’t being dangled, it really is being offered. This is not a trap door. You can put your weight on this, all of your weight, and it will hold you. 

We’ve all gotten used to being dropped. We’ve come to expect it. Can’t you hear the cynicism in her response? Her words are dripping with sarcasm when she says, “Oh, I’m sure that’ll all get sorted out and everything will be hunky-dory, once the Messiah shows up. Like that’s ever going to happen, or even if it does, like it’ll make any difference for someone like me.”  

I can imagine that even as his heart was breaking for this woman, maybe with tears in his eyes, Jesus also couldn’t help but smile, knowing as he did all the goodness that was right there within reach for her. Did she see him smiling and feel puzzled? Was there some joke she wasn’t in on? Some punchline she missed? I think there was. That woman had no idea, just like most of us have no idea, how much love, forgiveness, goodness, beauty, and relief is sitting so very close to us. That’s the joke God is playing on evil, whatever bitterness Jesus touches is made sweet. Whatever soured well we’re drawing from, if we’ll sit there with Jesus, he can overcome it, and meet our disappointed thirst with the sweetness of living water. Of course you’ll have trouble in this world, he says, but don’t give in to it – don’t believe the claim it makes on you, keep up your courage, because I have overcome the world.

A Closing Prayer Against Cynicism

Oh Lord, we have been so hurt in so many ways. We have been dropped again and again, so that it is very hard to believe that we could be held, or that any good thing could be relied upon. Cynicism tempts us to resignation and hopelessness. Having experienced so much sorrow, cynicism feels most reasonable and safe. But, I feel my heart slipping away from me into a cold, paralyzing darkness. Lowered down into a pit of low expectations, where it is safe from the threat of more heartbreaking deferred hope. Safe, Lord, but cut off from the warmth of love and the joy of light. Come, Lord Jesus, and meet us in these low, cold, hurting places, like you met the woman by the well, and smile upon us here. Tell us again, for our sorrow makes us forget, the good news about how small evil and sorrow really are set next to your love for us — set next to your power to bring new life where death has made such arrogant, enormous claims. We are putting ourselves in your hands, Lord, do not drop us. We are asking to be held, do not let go of us. As we experience your reliable love, draw us out of cynicism into the solid reality of your inexhaustible goodness and care. 

Through your resurrected Son Jesus Christ, Amen.