We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Reflecting on the Conference and Cynicism
We had such a great time this weekend at the Faith, Doubt & the Idol of Certainty conference. People came from all over the United States and it was good to get a chance to connect. We’re more convinced than ever that God is up to something beautiful and real. You’ll be hearing more about this last weekend soon. Thanks to everyone who came and participated. It was a huge blessing.
We thought it would be good to follow up our week of posts on doubt with David Flower’s reflections on cynicism. We received a question during the Q&A session of the conference asking whether too much doubt can lead to cynicism. The short answer is, “Yes”. Doubt and cynicism are two different animals. We are not championing doubt, we’re championing openness and honesty. If you feel like you’ve fallen into cynicism, David’s words will provide a needed corrective and some encouragement for you.
From David’s piece:
But let me be clear. It’s not cynicism simply to acknowledge reality. It’s just that we can’t fully know what’s real without considering the God revealed in Jesus. Reality must conform to the good news of Christ.
Cynicism leads to despair. Repent of it when it’s at work in you.
Repent by believing that God is greater than the evil at work in the world. He calls us to be people of hope. Hopeful realism is about resurrection and the promise of new creation. It allows us to see the Spirit of God at work, and it empowers us to join him in shaping God’s good future.
Category: General
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Connecting, Cynicism, David Flowers, Doubt, Doubt and the Idol of Certainty, Faith, Fellowship, Hope, Truth, Viva la Revolution!
Related Reading
What Is an Idol?
We all believe lies about God that have caused us to mistrust him and therefore to look elsewhere for life. This is what an idol is. It’s anything we try to use to fill what only God can fill. God never intended anyone or anything other than Jesus Christ to meet our core need for…
The Longing of Advent
The Advent season is a time of anticipating the coming of God, in Christ, a time of turning our imagination toward the revelation of God’s love for us. This after all is the deepest longing of our heart, and our natural longings always point us to something real. We grow hungry only because there’s such…
Why Doesn’t God Make Himself Obvious?
Why is faith so difficult? Why isn’t God more obvious? Why doesn’t God come out and provide irrefutable proof that he is God so that there is no more doubt? Greg’s father raised such questions and Greg’s responses are recorded in the book Letters from a Skeptic. _______________________ What would happen … if God individually…
Help Us Name Our Connecting Site!
As most of you know, there is a fledgling kingdom movement that is rising up around the globe today. It is a post-Christendom, neo-Anabaptist movement that I’ve sometimes described as “a Jesus-looking God raising up a Jesus-looking people to transform the world in a Jesus-kind-of-way” – though the description would be more accurate (but also more…
God’s Church is Not “Pretty”
This week we’ve been looking at various aspects of what it means to be the church. Today, I want to address the paradox of how the church can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Jesus came into our fractured world to manifest the beauty of God’s reign and revolt against the evil…