Hopefully cynical

cyn·i·cal
/ˈsinək(ə)l/
adjective
1.
believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity.
“her cynical attitude”

hope·ful
/ˈhōpfəl/
adjective
feeling or inspiring optimism about a future event.
“a hopeful sign”

To change the world, your own, or on a higher scale. I think that one must find serenity between opposing mental enemies. Good, bad, ugly. We wouldn’t need saving if we weren’t hopelessly lost. There wouldn’t be a point in trying if there wasn’t something worth saving, or at least able to be saved. Christianity, at least pure christianity, faith, love, hope is a dichotomy of cynicism and hope. One can not be effective until you have found yourself on the same level of worthless as the person you think is the most worthless. Until you reach this level of understanding you can not plausibly surrender to God’s command to love your neighbor as yourself. You can not fathom loving your enemy to pray for their welfare. Perhaps, this is why Jesus wrestled hardest with the spiritually dead conservatives of his time. Yeah, he wrestled with liberals of his day, but not as much. Self-righteousness is harder to remove from someone than it is to teach someone who perhaps is not trying to avoid sin. It is easier to show someone who is ignorant of their sin than someone who believes they have not sinned. The truth is that those who feel the weight of their sin, are closer to redemption than those who have followed the letter of the law, physically or at least as much outwardly as the flesh would allow.

Satan does his best work within the church. When the church is united in Christ, there is no place for him. If we are students of history, healthy cynicism says that he plants his deceit in the same congregations as believers. I believe that there is two reasons God allows this. One, he doesn’t need cynicism, he knows the hearts of men and chooses to allow it to be played out. He knows who will prevail, who won’t. God knows what kind of person we are. He knows what heard mentalities do to faith. He needs for us to be able to look at history to see who people are, so that perhaps we will repent of continuing the same sins as those who came before us.

If one is not cynical of one’s self then he becomes cynical of everyone else, and there is no hope. If honest cynicism begins with one’s self, ones family, ones loved ones, those whom they prefer to trust on the things that one has been told to accept is right. You can find hope in holding up ones own world to the fire of truth. If one is humble, truth will burn away the lies. What is left can grow like a forest regrows new and stronger than before. The problem is that we have been taught that if you question perceived truth, then you will surely go astray. If you go to the world to find truth, this is the truest outcome. However if you examine your world, the truths you have been told, the truths you have believed to be truth. You need to have a central definitive truth to examine it to. For me, whether your pastor says it. Your denomination says it. Family says it. If it’s not true to the word of God, it’s not true. That said, when examined to the word of God and given conviction by the Holy Spirit, regardless of how uncomfortable you can not go back to calling it truth no more uncomfortable those in your life make you for the truth.

In example, pre tribulation theology, which has no scriptural basis apart from taking scripture out of context and philosophical views as a pretense for why one does not believe God would put the church through the tribulation. Not to mention that there is no theological history to it until the 19th century. It is important to distinguish between the two positions because either you will be preparing to be taken away secretly, or purposely prepared in mind and spirit to endure to the end as Christ himself admonished us to. I believe that we need to firmly grounded in faith so that we do not become deceived as Paul warned us many would be. Now, I do not believe that one’s beliefs on pre tribulation or post tribulation theology, matters for salvation. However I do believe that it is a tool that has created division more so than it should. It shows how emotional reasoning based on ones surroundings can separate us from each other. Which is the point of why I write, not to talk on the divisive theology, but the point that we are divided.

What of those spiritual principalities? The ones we wrestle with? What are they up to with in the church? Division. Hostility. Anxiety. Complacency. Entitlement. Judgmental self-righteousness. If a church has works they hand the church pride. If the church has stability, they fatten it up into complacency. If there is love, they court the church into division by the lusts and anxieties of the flesh. They show us what we are able to lose if we concede that we are not entitled to being in control. They threaten our liberties, and play to our vanities. A church in my opinion has always been stronger when it is not in accordance with the government under which it lives. Those who are more concerned with keeping control of worldly status, are afraid of losing control, and are ineffective in spreading the gospel or working together in brotherly love towards each other and towards his neighbor. That said there is a place in government that has been used despite the dangers of hypocrisy to spread the gospel, to spread good will around the world. To me it’s no more expression of satisfaction or condemnation from God whether a country prospers based on their faith as a whole or lack thereof. Just because you carry God’s name and prosper doesn’t mean that you know him. Wicked people exist regardless. They continue, and God will continue to use them to further the gospel. Just because you suffer doesn’t mean that you are fallen from grace, in fact suffering causes the strengthening of faith. It is to you to ask God to show you who you are and where you stand with him. It is also important to not follow the crowd.

Lately I’ve been harping on racism, civil rights, and social inequality lately, which is not the point of this post but is a great example of the necessity for it. I think that history is not so far removed from our present. I think that the pride, arrogance, and idolization of a better time in America, still exists as it did for those reminiscent of the the antebellum south after the the civil war. Make america great again? Certainly arrogance does not make a nation great nor does wealth. Perhaps we should not have marveled at how wealthy we were as a nation once upon a time but ponder how great God is and how we have been used greatly despite how wicked our nation has acted in God’s name. Looking at the good we’ve done as a nation does not excuse the evil we have done as a nation. It may not be as pronounced now; certainly people are not slaves anymore. However systems that were put in place after the civil war; along with the denial of those systems having evolved or staying in place shows how christianity as a whole can be corruptible within certain churches to the point of needing reviving or walked away from altogether. The laws may have changed, but the principalities that were influencing the church, keeping slavery legal and christians who followed the bible as the Pharisees who once followed the Torah, prideful in themselves; those principalities are alive and well today. Showing the unbelievers the hypocrisy within the church. Leading christians within the church into prideful thinking that at least they don’t partake in those things the unbelievers do or thing that other churches allowed.  Causing weak christians to walk away because they had no foundation to speak of. Principalities that  bring anxiety that they are going to lose their “christian” country.

However on the flip side of the coin despite all adversity and hypocrisy, faith with in another part of the church was born. Those who were enslaved. Those who had faith despite not enjoying all of the liberties of freedom. Those who were crying out to God for freedom from American oppression, which has slowly come but still we see the hypocrisy within the system that is perpetuated to this day and ignored, or admonished as right and good with in the church. I would be wrong to say a good enough part of the church opposed the wrongs to make changes but this is the example history shows to us. Yes the laws changed but the mindsets didn’t. People still believe that they are better than one another, those with authority exercise their authority with this mindset.

Now we either can accept or deny racial inequalities are happening today; while we may not have participated in creating a system which has helped ourselves, our parents and grandparents directly or indirectly(who were alive in the 60s civil rights) and hurt minorities. If we continue to say that centuries of systems of historical oppression placed on black people whether slavery, Jim crow laws, officers of the law and government agencies particularly operating to control predominantly black neighborhoods, 50 years is three living generations. That’s 50 years of learning to be civilized racists, whitewashed racism. I don’t believe in generational curses, however I do believe that parents pass down prejudices and children act out those prejudices regardless of laws. Those in authority, police forces particularly, are taught to act superiorly by previous generations. How do you think that they will act?

Calling evil good and good evil. Which is is absolutely what the right side political minded christians rightfully say the left does. As far as morally the left indulges in, while doing it themselves in equal but different ways. Because the right has indulged in calling evil good, racial inequality, greed, capitalism to the point that people are enslaved to underpaying jobs. Creating laws that created the largest prison population in the world based largely on the drug choice such as marijuana, which was hypocrisy as alcohol stayed the legal choice because “people drink to be happy and smoke to get high”, yet the biggest reason that it was illegal was because Nixon hated Jews. Especially Jewish psychiatrist. Then again, those who claim to follow Christ were never called to legislate morality. God already did that. That failed, and perhaps the point was for it to fail. Man can not live morally right apart from God according to God. Everytime religion has come to power whether a Catholicism or some protestant state sponsored, results were killing each other over it. American solution was freedom of religion, yet not freedom for everyone.

Which to me, people choose sin in whatever form, one of the sins we as a free democratic nation indulged in is creating laws that criminalize behavior that we personally see to be “sinful” yet indulged in other equally questionably sinful behaviors based on prejudice. That in my opinion is why God is giving this nation into its fears as he did with Israel. I believe that is far worse to misrepresent God to the world than to not believe and be apart from God.

Changing gears, as I’ve made my point to history on the stubborn nature of people and my reasoning for skepticism on mainstreaming christianity. Just because a lot of believers believe something is right or wrong, doesn’t make it right or wrong. People are extremely hard headed. People follow emotion over truth. Whether it’s historically accurate recording, or personal interpretation (perhaps bad reading comprehension) of the bible. I could have simply said what I am about to say, but people in general are willfully ignorant, hard headed and arrogant. Whether it’s racism, condemnation to hell for musical taste, hairstyles, eating pork, getting tattoos.

I do not offer all of this to damage faith, or judge, but shine a light on darkness. We are trying to contend with fleshly advisories in a spiritual war. We as a nation contend for our rights. We contend with each other for who’s right when we are both wrong. We contend more for our right to bear arms to protect our selves than we contend for feeding people or making sure we all have what is needed. I’m not saying it’s wrong to own a gun. I am saying that if you personally know someone one who can ask his dad to call down legions of angels, and you are scared of going out before your time because some democrats going to take your guns, perhaps its time to examine what you believe. Again I do believe that there is stronger and weaker faith. We need to examine that and do something about this before we go out don’t you think?

What do the principalities that we should be contending with gain from all of this? It causes christianity which is particularly called to be salt to become flavourless. Whether you are talking about hypocrisy, endless theological debates, miss treatment of your neighbor. It inoculates people from hearing truth. It pushes people into becoming ineffective in there faith. Causes people to find reasons to hate their enemies. Doesn’t matter whether it’s national media agendas, unconfirmed and unreliable conspiracy theories that fit your narrative on YouTube, political narrative. We are continually bombarded with truth and lies all day long. Is it real, is it not. Is it this, is it not. They said this or they did not. Do masks work or not… Are they trying to kill us with vaccines or is the government appointed by God and keeping us safe?

Personally, this is all I know that God is in control. That is what I know. I know regardless of political choice, the whole system is fallen people carrying out a fallen system. What I don’t know is what’s in people’s hearts. I know that neither the man of perdition has been revealed; nor are the vaccines are on the right hand or forehead. I know that as with all medicine it can be useful and/or harmful. I know that God allows physicians knowledge, I know Satan corrupts knowledge. I know that in Christ whether you are vaccinated or not, he is bigger than either. Which is in itself one more thing principalities are going to use to separate us from one another. Whether you believe that vaccines will magically make you something other than human or cause you to take the mark. Thus repeating the lie Satan told people about black people not being equal to white people, thus not only making slavery in America stay but caused it to be worse than most recorded history. We judged the Egyptians for their part biblically, yet a Christian country said hold my beer. America said at least we weren’t Hitler. Yet how many lives, were taken. Families torn apart, lives lost in transit, beatings, malnutrition, lynchings, rapings. Look at the longevity. You are only as worthless as the one whom you consider to be the most worthless.

I know that I’ve written a very long list of reasons for cynicism, however that is not what I want to leave on. Honest cynicism is a tool for sobriety. Perhaps a reflection of a mirror on reality. Truth is God the father. He has a plan. One that is amazing and more awesome than we can fathom. Do I believe that we are destined for better days? Perhaps a full return to normal life? Are we going to see the best America that we can? Absolutely not. I told you. I am cynical. However my hope is in God. As worthless as I am he knows me. I believe that when he sends his son all will be made right. I believe that for all of my own failings, one day he will make all things new. I know that for all of the things that I have pointed to as wrong, makes me no better than those who committed them. Truth be told it is only by God’s light on the world that worse has not been committed. If it wasn’t for his light in the world we all are capable of the same if not worse. That is the hope. If with the light that he has left us with has kept the world from so much; how much better when he returns? How much more is currently possible if we surrender to him and stop fighting with flesh and start bringing down enemy strong holds again?

2 Corinthians 10:4 KJVS
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds 😉