Faith and Cynicism
Psalm 13
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
June 9, 2024
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
We’re in a series of sermons on how God helps us in life. We’ve focused on the psalms to address peace in anxiety, rest from exhaustion, purpose over indifference, freedom from comparison and today faith over cynicism.
The sermon in a sentence:
We can move from cynicism to optimism when we focus on God and what He is doing in His world.
I would like for us to talk about:
The Cause of Cynicism
The Crisis of Cynicism
The Cure of Cynicism
The Cause of Cynicism
Anne Rice is an American author. She wrote a series of books called The Vampire Diaries. The first book of the series became a movie, a movie with more stars than any other you’ve never seen, unless you’ve seen the movie. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, Kirsten Dunst, a film about vampires.
Anne Rice was a prolific writer and her faith became public because she would write about it and post about it. She grew up in strict Catholicism and then she tells the story how she rejected it, about the time she goes to college, she drifted away, then she lived most of her adult life as an atheist, self-proclaimed secular humanist.
Then she comes to Christ, later in her life. Then there’s another twist. About ten years ago she posted this:
“Today I quit being a Christian. I remain committed to Christ, but not to being a Christian or to be a part of Christianity. It is simply impossible to me to belong to such as quarrelsome disputation, deservingly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried, I’ve failed, I’m an outsider. My conscious will allow me nothing else.”
Have you ever been there? The Psalms reveal that we all struggle. God’s word is so real; it holds nothing back, the ecstasy of joy and the brutal facts of life. Today we’re looking at a Psalm 13. Have you ever been there? Personally, in the last few years these fringe Christians, the crazies, have done and said things that make me say, “Not my Jesus. I’m not a part of your tribe. This is not the way of Jesus.”
Some of us have been hurt by church folks and we give up on God and we give up on God’s people. The sentiment of Anne Rice is a classic case of cynicism.
This little psalm is packed, it is like an espresso shot of theology and emotion.
Let’s look at verse 1 and 2:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
I want you to think about a struggle or a crisis in your life. David is asking, “How long will I struggle with these questions, or with depression? I want to believe like the rest of the world. Will you forget me forever?” Four times he says “How Long” and this brings the element of time.
Pessimism (unresolved) + Time = Cynicism.
It is likely some of us are cynic. If pessimism says, “I’m not so sure about those people.” Cynicism says, “I KNOW about those people, I’m certain.” Pessimism says, “I don’t know if God is hearing my prayers.” Cynicism says, “I KNOW that God is not hearing my prayers, prayer doesn’t work.” Cynicism is the next level, it has to do with distrust, questioning other people’s motives.
Often times when we go off to college or when we’re in other circles, we hear statements against faith in God. If we aren’t in His word, we will believe anything and everything that we are told.
Cynical people think that they are so smart. Are we self-aware that we know that we are cynical? Would others describe you and me as a negative person? Ask them, “Am I giving off negative vibe? Is everything that I believe or say is preapproved by my tribe?”
Cynics are slow to learn, slow to love, and slow to serve.
Some of us here are cynical and we don’t even know how we got this. Let’s get real, a lot of time has been invested to create cynicism. A lot of stuff in life can make us cynical, you and I have been through a lot.
Ralph Jacobson is a Lutheran Old Testament scholar and he suggests the first two verses revolve around three complaints: theological, personal and social.
How long will the war in Ukraine, Israel last? How long will the partisan politics continue so that nothing gets done? How long will we question the sanctity of every human life from the womb to the tomb?
Cynicism is a choice. Our response to life makes us cynical. David is asking how do I combat this phenomenon in my life? The CAUSE of cynicism is the struggle, plus time.
The crisis of cynicism
Now the crisis of cynicism, the inflection point is will we stay in or not?
Verse 3
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
Now we have a threefold demand of God:
First, Lord consider, look at me. I’m calling out to you. Cynicism leads to lack of prayer. Secondly, answer me. Lastly, enlighten me.
Anne Rice is stating what Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, but I don’t like your Christians.” Anne is taking her eyes away from the light of the world and placed it on the Christians. So an individual becomes a church of one, you’re the savior, the captain of your boat, a dark place to be.
The old quote, “The man with limburger cheese on his upper lip thinks the whole world stinks.” Limburger cheese is potent and it ages, like cynicism, over time. You don’t grow better, you grow bitter and your light that is supposed to show the world, is dimming and getting darker, everything is grey.
This is what Jesus is getting to in Matthew 6:22, 23, he says if the eye is good, your whole world will light up, the whole body is lit up. If you eye is bad, then your whole body, your whole world is dark; if you don’t have light in you, you are going to see the world in a different way, it is going to be dark.” And he says, “How GREAT is that darkness!”
As believers, instead of seeing the world as beautiful, and wonderful and colorful, we see the world grey, we cease to be the light of the world. This happens because we’ve taken our eyes off the light of the world and we’ve put it on people around us. Friends that’s fatal, because just maybe God may be working on people around us, like he is in your life and my life. Maybe your optimism and your hope in Christ is going to change someone’s life.
If you are always contrary, pointing fingers, blaming, THAT says more about your own character than it says about other people. Many of us can live that way, not a bright witness in the world.
Verse 4
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him, ”lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
Don’t miss this, David is still praying. Lesson: you know you’re cynical if you don’t pray.
Oswald Chambers: You can’t do more than prayer, until you pray. We need to pray with hope and expectation.
The Cure of Cynicism
Verse 5
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
Believe. “Hesed” goes back to Genesis 15 and it is covenantal love. Animals were sacrificed for the sins of Abraham. The animals were cut in half and were placed in a bloodpath. God is passing through the covenant halves — twice. God passes through the halves on behalf of Abram.
In other words, "Abram, when you fall short, I will cover your shortfall. We will pay for it in my blood." It was a one-way love- unconditional, and a type of shadow of Christ who 2,000 years later becomes the perfect sacrifice on the cross. One-way love. God says, “place your trust on what I have accomplished for you.”
Trust, rejoice in your salvation, and third in verse 6 be grateful:
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
In her book, Out of Darkness, Anne Rice wrote this and we wonder, “Wow, later in your life, why don’t you come back to this and maybe she did.”
“In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological and social questions which kept me from God for countless years. I simply let them go. There was a sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything, I did not have to know everything. And in seeking to know everything, I’ve been all my life missing the point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from him. No question of scripture integrity, no torment of the faith of this or that atheist friend or gay friend, no worry of those condemned or ostracized by my church or any other church to stand between me and him. The reason: it was magnificently simple. He knew why everything happened. He knows the disposition of every single soul. He wasn’t let anything happen by accident. Nobody was going to hell by mistake.”
She continued, “The world of atheism was cracking apart from me, just as once the world of Catholic faith had cracked apart. I was losing my faith in the nonexistence of God (Anne Rice)”
Some of us need to lose faith of our faithlessness.
Tim Keller: Cynicism lives only by refusing to apply the same razor edge to itself as it does to all else. Are we ever cynical about our cynicism?
May God help us as we move beyond cynicism as we focus on the greatness of God and our potential for good in our world.