Get Out of Your Head - The Antidote for Cynicism

Do you think of yourself as a skeptical person, you know, kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop? Do you see kind of the world with that half empty glass instead of half full?

That mentality is what some people call cynicism. And today we're going to learn how pervasive it is, how it steals our joy, and how we can learn to make it go away. Stay with me. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the daily Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Drouin. Now in just a minute, we'll continue our new series, Get Out of Your Head, taught by our guest speaker, Jenny Allen. You know, as society continues to drift further from the truth of God's word, we realize it's vitally important to turn to biblically grounded voices like Jenny to share a different viewpoint on what we're experiencing in our world. We believe that through her insight and the wisdom of our teaching team, we can better encourage and support Christians to really live like Christians. Now for those who don't know, Jenny's a bestselling author, experienced Bible teacher, and the founder of the If Gathering events. In this series, Jenny's identifying seven toxic thoughts that pollute our minds and seven remedies that can stop them in their tracks.

So with all that said, let's join Jenny now for her talk, The Antidote for Cynicism. So we are diving into the different enemies that attack our mind. And today we're going to talk about one that I see everywhere. And the tricky one with this is it's actually valued by most of us. It's not something we typically fight because I think it's something that we respect in people. It's something we think is really helpful in life. And it's called cynicism.

And I see it everywhere. So I don't know if you even notice it in yourself. So I wanted to read a few questions because honestly, I think we've all become cynical, but it's kind of the air we breathe.

So we don't even notice it. I want to ask you a few questions that would kind of be a good self diagnostic tool to see if you are cynical. So do you get annoyed when people are optimistic? So I want you to answer these.

So if you can jot them down, if you're sitting somewhere, if you can't just answer them in your head. Do you get annoyed when people are optimistic? When someone is nice to you, do you wonder what that person wants? Do you constantly feel misunderstood? When things are going well, are you waiting for the bottom to fall out? Do you quickly notice people's flaws or faults? Do you worry about getting taken advantage of? Are you guarded when you meet someone new? Do you wonder sometimes why people just can't get it together? Are you sarcastic?

I asked these questions to my team and they all started out. The reason I actually wrote those questions was because they all started out like, yeah, I struggle with all these enemies. I know all these enemies that you wrote about except for cynicism. I don't think I'm very cynical. So I thought, I bet they are.

I know they are. So I wrote these questions and then I made them answer them and they all were like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I was so cynical. So I don't know how you feel right now, but I think a lot of us relate to those questions and struggle with these things. Cynicism is an especially powerful tool from the enemy because when you and I are struck by it, we don't see our need to be helped. We get arrogant and we separate ourselves from getting help from needing people we think we know more than everybody else. I want to talk about what cynicism is. Cynicism is this idea that we're looking for the bad to keep the bad from hurting us. It's protection. It's making sure that we're not getting taken advantage of, making sure that somebody is not using us. And in a world where people can be really hurtful, cynicism can sometimes be helpful. So we start to prize it.

We start to feel educated, like we're not naive. I want to tell you a story about my team. My team is so amazing.

Love them so much. And they're great friends, all of them. And when I think about them, they're not notably cynical for crying out loud. They moved to Dallas, a lot of them, to serve God and to be a part of this ministry.

They're so surrendered and they're constantly obedient. But we were sitting around dinner when I was working on this book and this project. And one of the girls there was like, if I just choose to see the good in things and I just choose to think positively, I'm going to get taken advantage of. And one of the girls that was there, she doesn't work for us any longer, but she is just delightful. Literally the girl, like little sunshine on a stick. Like she just is happy, smiling all the time, positive about everything. Even her voice is like sweet as syrup. Like she is just so sweet and kind. And so she's sitting next to me and I looked at Elizabeth and I said, Elizabeth, you tell me what you think about that because she is that. She models it. She walks around with joy in her heart every minute of every day.

She sees the best in everybody. Some people would think of it as naive. And she said, so what?

So what if I get taken advantage of? I'm happier. I was like, that's so brilliant. Like we're choosing. It's our mind, y'all.

We're not talking about our circumstances. We're talking about the thing we live with day in and day out, day in and day out. And if it's conditioned and constantly looking for the negative, it will find the negative. It will find the negative in our family members. It will find the negative in our friendships. It will find the negative in our circumstances, in our jobs, in our callings. It will find the negative in everything if we let it. And so this idea of cynicism has actually, I feel like it's this slow leak. Like right now, my tire, every time I get in the car, it's going down and it's taking like weeks to get to where it's a dangerous level.

But like I've noticed there's a slow leak and it's extra slow, but it keeps alerting me like it's getting lower and lower and lower. And that's exactly what cynicism is. It's a slow leak of joy in our lives. Because if we fixate on negative, then we are not ever going to be happy. And I know as Christians, we've got a lot bigger goals than happiness, right?

That's not our ultimate goal. But at the end of the day, what we think about and the joy that inhabits our mind and our hearts is and should be a goal of Christianity. Who wants to follow after people that are following after God that doesn't issue joy? You know, I mean, I don't want that.

We have a God that issues ultimate joy, like ultimate hope, ultimate peace, peace that surpasses understanding, Scripture tells us. So we should be reflecting those things if we actually believe this and if we're actually following God. And yet, what cynicism does is it makes us question all of our authorities, so we never submit. It makes us question all of our institutions, so we never participate. It makes us question all of our friendships, so we never connect. It makes us question our family members, so we never ever feel safe.

I mean, it will erode our confidence and our joy and all of the gifts that God's given us to help us follow Him, to help us grow up in the faith, to help us live out full and abundant and obedient lives. So how do we change this? Well, one, I think we've got to be careful what we're feeding our souls. And for me, really candidly, I had to get off Twitter. If you go there right now, you will see one tweet that I've written in the last six months, because even though I'm sure that's a mechanism that could grow my platform, it was not feeding my soul. And I just decided, you know what, I'm not closing my account yet, but I'm never going there. And I would say I go there maybe every few months just to check in, see what's happening with friends, because some of my friends are only on Twitter.

And then I'll also just browse through, you know, messages and that kind of thing. But I don't participate on Twitter. And the reason why is because it always made me cynical. Every time I got off Twitter, I doubted every single thing about God, everything about church, everything about the hope for humanity.

It just felt like everything there is believing the worst in everything. And I wanted to believe the best. I didn't know how to fight for that when that was the constant input of my life.

So I just left. Now, that is not to say I do not stay educated, guys, I'm a political person. I was a poli sci minor in college, like I care about politics.

I just don't think they're the ultimate hope. So I don't over engage there. But I care. So I stay up to date. And when something's really interesting, I'll go read more about it. If there's a war that's brewing that I want to know more about, I'll go read more about it.

But I don't sit there and consume my news from angry people on Twitter. You know, we moved to Dallas, and I decided I'm going to be really careful about who are my friends. I'm just going to choose the people that are going to input into my life, not the people I love, because we need to be loving people that are not healthy and that need us, you know. But I'm talking about the people that are going to be in my ear every day that are really close to me. I'm going to make sure that they are positive people.

I know this sounds so cheesy. But I needed people that were life giving, people that saw the good in the world and saw the good in me and saw the good and not naively so. But I want to speak to the naivety issue because I think sometimes we can just see positive people and assume they're naive. When I think of my friend Elizabeth, she has actually been through a lot. When you hear her story, you're like, gosh, you have been through a lot. So she's not naive to suffering. She's not naive to disappointment.

She's not naive to people hurting her. She just has chosen a better way. And she, you know, she's selfish about it. She's like, I mean, it's just a better way to live. I don't enjoy being negative about everyone all the time. I don't want to live that way. And I think that's what we've got to do is we need to get a little bit selfish and zealous for ourselves and our minds and saying, you know what, this is not leading to life and peace for me.

And I don't know what your Twitter is or what your thing is that that just is not leading to life and peace. But you need to notice it in yourself. Like gosh, this is causing a cynical spirit in me towards people. And that could be gossipy friends. That could be friends that are always complaining about their husbands.

That could be friends that are always complaining about their job to be co-workers. And I'm not saying you never spend time with them. But you guard your mind and you don't spend all your time with them. And when you're spending time with them, you have a plan of attack. I do this with my kids. When they go through seasons where their friends are making bad choices with their words and like gossiping all the time, I'm like, you don't need to cut off your friends and not have them anymore, necessarily.

Because that's, you know, certain years of our lives, gossip is just part of it. But how do we turn the conversation? How do we bring life and peace into a conversation and you, you have those little sound bites that turn the conversation around. And so I think we've just got to be light in dark places, but we also need places that are full of light and that bring energy and life and joy into us. So then the question is, if I'm already cynical, how do I fight this?

What does it look like? And I'm going to tell you, this one took me on a journey. It didn't end up in an obvious place. This one for me was when I thought back to what has interrupted my cynicism. I saw a theme and that theme was delight, that I get less cynical when I see delight because we don't see it coming. It is delightful. It hits something in us that, that our rational, reasonable self didn't see coming. And that's what happened to me.

A song can do that to me. Beauty is God's evidence of something far more wonderful that's coming. It's this hope. It paints a picture of a world that is beyond the one that we live in now, a world that is coming. That's what beauty does. It reminds us there's something coming that's bigger and better and more beautiful than what we live in right now. Evidence that there's a creator who is loving and profoundly delightful. And so when we see beauty, we find ourselves delighted. We find ourselves enjoying God again. We find ourselves, our hearts tender. That's how I feel in worship so often is that I'll be worshiping and all of a sudden I'm in tears, even though my heart has been hard for a week, I'll all of a sudden be crying before God because worship has just pierced something in me that isn't rational, but it causes me to delight and enjoy God's delight over me. And so I want to talk about this because I don't think we value delight.

I think we don't value a lot of these things that God's given us as weapons. And we've talked about in the past about God delighting over us, but think of the ways God delights you. Just look outside right now, out of your window, whether it's raining or snowing or leaves are falling or whatever it looks like right now, or it's bright and sunny, whatever it looks like outside, there's delight in God's creation. There's delight in the way he built seasons, the way he built trees, the way he built a leaf. I remember looking at a leaf one time and I actually led a bunch of girls through a whole Bible study one time, just looking at leaves and realizing like, gosh, he made every leaf on earth differently.

Like that should blow our minds. Like there is delight and power of God expressed to us daily through creations. There is delight over, have you ever seen a baby born? I mean, when you see a life brought into the world, there's something just so delightful. My little niece right now is probably the cutest human I have ever met. Like literally I have the cutest human as a niece that I have.

I know my own children are like, mom, what about us? Well, I'm sorry, she's the cutest baby I've ever met in my whole life. And I literally, when I'm with her, I'm mesmerized.

I can't even stand it. I like study every finger, every toe. I look at fingers and toes all the time and never think anything about it. But what about a baby like expresses something about God and his delight over us? And I think these are the things that God's given us to remind us like, hey, I'm safe, I'm trustworthy, I'm likable, and my world is good. And yes, there is sin in institutions sometimes. And yes, there is sin in people. And what cynicism says is, so never trust people. So never trust the church. So never trust God. And what delight says is, there is good too.

And there is trustworthy too. And there is redemption too. And what delight says is, there's joy. And when we think about God, we can get in these places where, and my team and I were doing a little diva on this recently, and they all shared this idea that there's this guilt they feel when things go well for them. Like there's something about to happen that's bad. Something's going to come that's bad.

Again, there's no promise that it won't. But why is that our immediate thing when something good happens to us? Why is that our immediate thing when there's something joyful to celebrate rather than sitting in the joy, delighting in the gift, enjoying what God has given us as a good thing because he is good, because he gives good things, Scripture says, Romans 8 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

This is true. God is doing that. And yes, some days, and some people, and some situations will disappoint us. But I would rather live full of joy believing the good and get burned every once in a while than constantly waiting to get burned and constantly seeing the negative. That is a sad way to live.

And I'm not going to do it. I'm going to keep believing good for our country. I'm going to keep believing good for my church. I'm going to keep believing good for my family. I'm going to keep believing good for this generation. I'm going to believe good because I believe we rise to what we believe.

I believe we rise to that. I see this in my kids all the time. When I watch Cooper, when I speak life over my son, he will rise to that. This was yesterday morning. I'm sending him to school and I'm saying, Buddy, you're a leader.

You are a leader. Act like one today. And he came in and afterwards, after school, he's like, Mom, it was a great day. It was a great day. He rose to that compliment.

He rose to what I saw him as. And we've got to realize that how we think influences what we say and what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about the people around us. And if we can start to speak life over them, it's called being life giving. The opposite of cynical, it's life giving. It's life speaking. It's life thinking. It's a different way to live, and the world is aching for it.

When you live this way, yes, some people will think you're naive, but most people will just want to go to coffee, because they need people that can speak truth and not just speak it, but actually believe it for them. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Jenny Allen has been our guest teacher for this program, The Antidote for Cynicism, which is from her series, Get Out of Your Head.

Chip will join us in just a minute to share his application for this message. Let me ask you a question. What drives your thought life? Is it anxiety, loneliness, feeling like the world's out to get you?

Perhaps you're really pessimistic or obsessed with being recognized. Well, in this series, Jenny identifies seven common thoughts that are actually toxic to our lives and can derail our connection with God. Don't miss how we can break free from these dangerous mindsets by wielding the power God's already given us. If you're wanting to learn more about this topic, let me encourage you to get Jenny's book, Get Out of Your Head. For complete details, go to livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap special offers. Well, our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, is with me in studio now, and Chip, Jenny wrapped up her message on the harmfulness of cynicism with the call to be life giving. And that's really what we're all about here at Living on the Edge, helping Christians live like Christians. Now, do you have a story that really drives home that idea? I sure do, Dave.

At some point you wonder, you know, is Living on the Edge really making a difference? And I got a note in the mail that I just have to share. Listen to this.

Dear Chip, we don't have enough words to show our gratitude. At one point, my husband and I both thought things were so bad, they'd never get better. But thankfully, I heard one of your sermons that spoke to our situation. So I started listening on a regular basis.

Now my husband listens too. Through God's transformation in our lives, we started seeing restoration in our family. Even though we're still a work in progress, we can see God's hand making direct changes in our lives. Recently, we decided to make a monthly donation to help keep your broadcast going. We realized that if your ministry helped us this much, then it can help others too. Thank you for all that you're doing to furthering God's kingdom, signed DR. And I just remind you, you know, we're all so personally focused and we're human that, you know, over a million people this week will hear what you're hearing.

And not only that, but then the broadcast and the teaching and the small groups will go to China, to the Middle East, and places all around the world because people pray and because people partner financially. And so if you're one of those partners, can I just tell you thank you very, very much? If you're one of those partners that kind of gives now and then and would ever consider prayerfully to say, you know, I bet I could give just a little a month, boy, those monthly partners really help us understand what we can project and making budgets, it's a huge help. And if you have never partnered with us financially, would you just today say, Lord, is this something you want me to do?

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App listeners tap donate. Well, Chip, let's get to that application we promised. Thanks, Dave. Out of everything that Jennie's been teaching so far, I'd have to say that fighting cynicism has been a battle that I've just had to fight over and over and over and over again. When your desire is to see things healed, your desire is to see new life, you want restoration, you just are longing and longing for things to get better. It just seems on some days that nothing gets better. At least that's the way you feel.

You get this lens and you'll meet someone young and zealous with all these great ideas. Here's how you know you're cynical. You just sort of nod your head and think, yeah, I remember when I used to believe that stuff and say that stuff. I've really tried to battle not becoming cynical because over the years I've had a lot of great opportunities given by God to sit in a back room with a bunch of speakers, Christian leaders. And it's interesting, I'll hear people get up in front of some very large audiences, but then have some private conversations where they down deep don't believe that there can be any real change, that they're very, very discouraged.

And don't get me wrong, the great majority of Christian leaders that I've had the privilege of hanging out with are very godly men and women. But what I saw was as people got older, especially, they didn't just lose their idealism. They started to lose the belief. And see, I think there's a false paradigm that we get.

It's the all or nothing paradigm. And when we see evil and tragedy and difficulty and division like we're seeing, and when there's pandemics and wars and all those things, especially if you allow your mind to be filled with multiple news broadcasts or be around really negative people, all those things are toxic over time to breed cynicism. And I would just remind you that life is a patchwork affair. And the patchwork affair in a fallen world is there is magnificent beauty, the beauty of a child being born, the beauty of a sunset, the beauty of that amazing sense and feeling of being in love, the beauty of watching someone recover from a tragic accident, the beauty of building something together, the beauty of watching orphans and widows being taken care of, the beauty of just all around us. But that beauty is always mixed in with sadness and sorrow, betrayals and disappointments. What I love about the scriptures and what Jenny's trying to help us see is we can't just look through the filter of the difficult, the painful.

I love her reminder that heaven, that there's an eternal perspective, there is a place, there is a future when everything is going to be right, but it's not here. And when you expect heaven-like circumstances in a fallen world, you set yourself up to be a cynic. And you know, when you're a cynic, you don't believe, you don't trust.

And over time you get negative. And so let me just encourage you, look for the beauty, thank God for all the good. And in the difficult, in the darkness, in the challenges, in the corruption, pray and just say, Lord, I know it won't always be like this, but let me be a light. Let me refuse to stop believing in becoming negative and cynical.

Let me in my little world be positive, be biblical, be loving, and make a difference where I live. Thanks, Chip. Well, before we go, let me take just a second and tell you about a resource we've created to help you deepen your relationship with God in a very practical way. It's called Daily Discipleship with Chip. Through this free video course, you'll learn to study God's Word alongside Chip one-on-one. For each series, you'll spend no more than 10 minutes with Chip in a particular passage of scripture. Then he'll challenge you to spend 10 more minutes on your own.

It's that easy. You'll be blown away by how much you'll learn about God and His Word. To sign up for any of our Daily Discipleship series today, just go to livingontheedge.org. App listeners, just tap Discipleship. Until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.