A lot of Christians with depression can easily slip into cynicism — both towards the world and God.
In his good book on prayer, Paul Miller explains why cynicism is so damaging to our spiritual life.
“Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: They both question the active goodness of God on our behalf…. Satan’s first recorded words are cynical. He tells Adam and Eve, ‘For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.’.” Satan is suggesting that God’s motives are 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.”
Later, Miller quotes a Cuban writer, Yoanni Sanchez, who writes of the younger generation: “Our defining characteristic is cynicism. But that’s a double-edged sword. It protects you from crushing disappointment, but it paralyzes you from doing anything. “
By the way, I don’t think we should chuck our cynicism.
We’d never come to Christ if we weren’t cynical about the world. Its failed promises, the fact it can never give us exactly what we want.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that behind every cynic is a romantic idealist, and we’re all romantic idealists until we’re not. Some of us lose it in childhood, some of us a bit later.
But at some point, we all grow cynical. That’s good. We can only embrace God’s promises when we give up on the world’s.
The problem is when we grow cynical towards God himself (I’ve been there, and still, often drift into that grey and weary land). That’s the cynicism we need to fight, but I know it’s so hard because after a lifetime of the world failing us, it’s hard to put faith in something else — no matter how otherworldly it is.
But that’s what all this is about, our Christian walk. Becoming a child, again, to God as savior, while remaining very grown up and cynical about the world as savior.
