I was a pastor, and yet I felt cynical about church.
I preached every week. I kept serving and loving the best that I could. But I had become an expert at spotting all that’s wrong with the church. I grew concerned over church politics, the way we spent money, how little we prayed, how little we seemed to rely on God’s power.
I had rightly identified some areas of legitimate concern, and yet my response was completely wrong. I had stopped loving God’s people and had started judging them instead.
The Danger of Cynicism
“Cynicism comes from a good place: high standards,” writes Peter Adam. “But cynicism is a dangerous way to express those standards. It gives us the luxury of being right without the responsibility of working for change … Cynicism is the worst response to high standards.”
Looking back, I’d been feeding on a diet of books critiquing the church. Cynicism is contagious. Hang around cynical people and read cynical books, and you will soon become a cynic yourself.
I’d also been hurt as a pastor. The right way to respond to hurt is to go to God for help, and to get help from others, confronting when necessary, and working toward forgiveness. Instead, I nursed those hurts. I became a cynic.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns what can happen when roe respond wrongly to hurt. “The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.”
“When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”
But such disappointment is also an opportunity, according to Bonhoeffer. “The very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together — the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.”
Disappointment with the church is an opportunity. We can choose to become cynics, or we can remind ourselves of God’s grace and enter into deeper community.
I’ve lived out both options. The latter is much better.
What’s Changed
Slowly I started to repent of my cynicism. I found help in two places.
First, I stopped reading critics of the church and started listening to lovers of the church. One of my greatest joys is discovering people who love the church, not because the church is perfect, but because they see it through God’s eyes.
Second, the more I grew in my appreciation for God’s grace in my life, the more I was able to extend grace to others. Sure, the church is imperfect. So am I. The church is a great gift, one that’s better than I deserve. It’s hard to be a critic of the church when one’s aware of his or her own sinfulness.
I’d caught a bad case of church cynicism. Now I hope to model and spread the opposite: love for the church, and amazement that I get to be part of it.
Cynicism is contagious and corrosive. So is love for the church. I’d caught a bad case of church cynicism. Now I hope to model and spread the opposite: love for the church, and amazement that I get to be part of it.
