The Battle Against Cynicism

June 14, 2022

A few weeks ago my family and I came home from our Best Possible Wonderfully Whirlwind candidating week in Minnesota. The people of Oak Haven had thought of every detail -and the things they couldn’t have possibly known to think of, God had. I kept looking for the catch, half-waiting for strings to be attached that never came. We were surrounded by the experiences, landscape, people and conversations that were just the perfect salves for our slightly dried-out hearts. And I had to come home and repent.

God’s goodness in that week, and throughout this whole process, has been corrective in my spirit. I have been in ministry a long time and through that I’ve encountered many powerfully miraculous experiences -but I’ve also faced almost as many heartbreaks, personal betrayals and tragedies. As a result, I sometimes find myself battling a false narrative that the Christian life is a doomed one - doomed to be drudgery, demanding, sore and un-fun. After all, it’s not about me, “die to self and be servant-hearted,” right? 

You may remember the 2010 Tonight Show Conflict. Through a series of mishandled contract negotiations, Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno became locked in a very public battle over the hosting duties of The Tonight Show. If you are a Millennial like me, you were probably Team Conan O’Brien (or Team Coco as it’s come to be known)*.Team Coco rallied a grassroots army but after several months, it finally became clear that Conan was moving on. He gave a moving farewell speech on his last night at the helm of The Tonight Show where he told his disappointed fans, “Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism – it's my least favorite quality, and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.” I watched that air live and something about that stuck with me in my young adult brain. Don’t be cynical. Here was someone who I believed to be deeply wronged, and yet he refused to let himself expect the worst.

If I’m not careful, Satan can grab a foothold through the cynicism I let creep in. And that leads to a rebellious immaturity that, frankly, turns my internal persona into an insolent child. I start thinking it’s easier to conceptualize that God is the Boss, a Benevolent Puppet Master pulling the strings with no regard to how I feel about it, than it is to accept that He is Good. Which is simply unbiblical, distrusting, sinful thinking. God is good because He says He is. Here and here and here and here and 61 other places throughout Scripture. Do you believe that the Bible is true? You must then believe that God is who He says He is, and that, my friends, is wholly and unequivocally good.

Imagine Job near the end of his story: after all the tragedy he experienced and the subsequent parade of opinionated friends, God finally contacts him. But instead of explaining the backstory of His showdown with Satan, God simply shows Job the vast majesty of creation. This overwhelms Job, who no longer questions God, accepts the limitations of his human knowledge, and recognizes Gods’ unlimited sovereignty and power. 

So the challenge remains for me, who am I to question God’s motives? And who am I to question whether God is who He says He is? To trust God is to also trust that He is good, and that’s something He’s been assertively reminding me of in this season. I’m not naive, I know that no ministry and no church is perfect. God has a healthy amount of work for me to do at Oak Haven and I’m excited about rolling up my sleeves and getting to work. But God is also showing me through this process that He is good, no strings attached.

*my apologies to you Gen-Xers who probably even now still love Jay Walking and a good all-denim ensemble.