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did not do this in obedience to any prescribed rule. It seemed natural. I thought of God as an everywhere-present Being, full of kindness and love, who would not be offended if children talked to him.
You’ll find yourself turning off the car radio to be with your Father. You’ll wake up at night and discover yourself praying. It will be like breathing.
When you stop trying to control your life and instead allow your anxieties and problems to bring you to God in prayer, you shift from worry to watching.
Since the Fall, evil feels omnipresent, making cynicism an easy sell. Because cynicism sees what is “really going on,” it feels real, authentic. That gives cynicism an elite status since authenticity is one of the last remaining public virtues in our culture.
The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaged, loving, and hoping.
It protects you from crushing disappointment, but it paralyzes you from doing anything.”
A praying life is just the opposite. It engages evil. It doesn’t take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God’s face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty.
In the nineteenth century that optimism shifted its foundation from the goodness of God to the goodness of humanity. Faith became an end in itself.
Optimism rooted in the goodness of people collapses when it confronts the dark side of life.
“I make the jump from optimism to darkness so quickly because I am not grounded in a deep, abiding faith that God is in the matter, no matter what the matter is. I am looking for pleasant results, not deeper realities.”
In naive optimism we don’t need to pray because everything is under control, everything is possible. In cynicism we can’t pray because everything is out of control, little is possible.
Without the Good Shepherd, we are alone in a meaningless story.
Our personal struggles with cynicism and defeated weariness are reinforced by an increasing tendency toward perfectionism in American culture. Believing you have to have the perfect relationship, the perfect children, or a perfect body sets you up for a critical spirit, the breeding ground for cynicism.
So true for me
Psychology’s tendency to hunt for hidden motives adds a new layer to our ability to judge and thus be cynical about what others are doing. No longer do people commit adultery out of lust—they have unmet longings that need to be fulfilled.
But this is actually true. Not cynicism
Jesus tells us to instead be warm but wary—warm like a dove but wary like a serpent. Jesus keeps in tension wariness about evil with a robust confidence in the goodness of his Father.
The feel of a praying life is cautious optimism—caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption. Cautious optimism allows Jesus to boldly send his disciples into an evil world.
‘May the God of hope, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’”
Cry out for grace like a hungry child. As soon as I begin simply asking for help, I have become like a little child again. I’ve stopped becoming cynical. Oddly enough, my prayer is answered almost immediately because in the act of praying I’ve become like a child. The cure for cynicism is to become like a little child again.
“those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight.”[1]
Prayer wasn’t self-discipline; it was desperation. I began by thanking God for his touches of grace from the previous day. Either I thanked God or I gave into bitterness, the stepchild of cynicism. There was no middle ground.
Nothing undercuts cynicism more than a spirit of thankfulness. You begin to realize that your whole life is a gift. Thankfulness isn’t a matter of forcing yourself to see the happy side of life. That would be like returning to naive optimism. Thanking God restores the natural order of our dependence on God. It enables us to see life as it really is.
Paul’s own life reflects a spirit of thanksgiving. Almost every time he describes how he prayed for people, he mentions thanksgiving.
Cynicism looks reality in the face, calls it phony, and prides itself on its insight as it pulls back. Thanksgiving looks reality in the face and rejoices at God’s care. It replaces a bitter spirit with a generous one.
Cynics imagine they are disinterested observers on a quest for authenticity. They assume they are humble because they offer nothing. In fact, they feel deeply superior because they think they see through everything.
True for me
Lewis said that what was required was a restoration of the innocent eye, the eye that can see with wonder.
In short, my empty religious performance leads me to think that everyone is phony. The very thing I am doing, I accuse others of doing. Adding judgment to hypocrisy breeds cynicism.
Repentance brings the split personality together and thus restores integrity to the life. The real self is made public. When the proud person is humbled, the elevated self is united with the true self.
Cynicism is the seed for Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, and it is the seed for our own personal rebellions. While attempting to unmask evil, the cynic creates it.
By cultivating a lifestyle of repentance, the pure in heart develop integrity, and their own fractures are healed. By beginning with their own impurity, they avoid the critical, negative stance of cynicism.
Cynicism looks in the wrong direction. It looks for the cracks in Christianity instead of looking for the presence of Jesus. It is an orientation of the heart. The sixth cure for cynicism, then, is this: develop an eye for Jesus.
Instead of focusing on other people’s lack of integrity, on their split personalities, we need to focus on how Jesus is reshaping the church to be more like himself. We need to view the body of Christ with grace.
Paul delights in the influence of Jesus on people’s lives. It is at the heart of his praying.
CHAPTER 12 WHY ASKING IS SO HARD
Before the Enlightenment, early scientists in the West wrote in their notes that they prayed. Johannes Kepler, the Danish astronomer who discovered the laws of interplanetary motion, wrote that he was “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”[7] Newton and others regularly gave glory to God in their writings.
Secularism is a religious belief that grew out of the pride of human achievement, particularly scientific achievement. It masquerades as science or reality, opposed to religion, which it calls opinion. Secularism claims to have given us the gift of science when, in fact, Christianity gave us the gift of science.
What Dana observed about believers—their wonder over the creation—is at the heart of why we even have science. If the stream is a result of accidental natural forces, then you just see water, rocks, and dirt. If God equals the stream, then you worship the stream god, not the creator of the stream. But if God created the stream, then wonder and curiosity naturally flow into study.
Asha had another non-Western idea firmly in mind. She believes that some people are more powerful with God.
power in prayer comes from being in touch with your weakness.
The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.
So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn’t important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn’t important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church.
Jesus neither suppresses his feelings nor lets them master him. He is real.
We don’t want a physical dependence on him. It feels hokey, like we are controlling God. Deep down we just don’t like grace. We don’t want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God.
Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence.
What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his.
Suffering is God’s gift to make us aware of our contingent existence. It creates an environment where we see the true nature of our existence—dependent on the living God. And yet how God actually works in prayer is largely a mystery.
Some might object, saying, “Speech computers would have been invented anyway.” It is often true with answers to prayer that when you look back, everything looks seamless, as if it would have all happened anyway. But looking back is actually a godlike stance, presuming to know how everything works.
If you are going to enter this divine dance we call prayer, you have to surrender your desire to be in control, to figure out how prayer works. You’ve got to let God take the lead. You have to trust.
James describes two dangers in asking. The first danger, on the left side of the following chart, is Not Asking. James writes, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” The second danger is Asking Selfishly: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2-3).
Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane demonstrates perfect balance. He avoids the Not Asking cliff, saying, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me” (Mark 14:36). Those who err on the Not Asking side surrender to God before they are real with him. Sometimes we try so hard to be good that we aren’t real. The result is functional deism, where we are separated from God.
Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them. He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will. He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.
