I'm a 24-Year-Old Cynic. Here's How I'm Coping.

“Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer.” — Pope Benedict XVI

When literary critic Steve Moore praised the novel Infinite Jest for its “sardonic worldview perfect for the irony-filled nineties,” the exasperated author, David Foster Wallace, replied that that was “like saying a ‘kerosen[e]-filled fire extinguisher perfect for the blazing housefire.’”

The ’90s may be over, but the scorching irony of our sardonic age shows no sign of dying out as David Foster Wallace may have hoped.

That we still need writers — and artists, thinkers, and plain old human beings — putting out fires of cynicism is clear enough to me. Not because I hate it. The problem is that I love being the cynic. For one, it’s easy:

Step one: Listen to your friend (or enemy) talk about something that they like or admire. Mother Teresa was so amazing.

Step two: Think of something unsavory that could maybe, possibly be the hidden motive or true nature behind what your friend just explained (don’t worry if it’s true or not). Share this with your friend, beginning your sentence with “Well, she/he/it/that just…” Well, she just reinforced peoples’ negative perceptions of Kolkata as a poor city.

Step three: Bask in the pleasure of having had the last word (best done in silence). It feels so great to be smarter than everyone else.

I also love being the cynic because I’ve been trained to be a critic. Academic work searches for the true meaning behind things, debunking the fake, the dishonest, and the unconsidered. And this is important work: For example, if you read the U.S. Constitution, it seems clear that all people in this country are equal in the eyes of the law. American history, however, tells a very different, sad story, of which we are all aware.

But like a ten inch zucchini growing to the size of a baseball bat in a few days of summer sun, the thoughtful inclination to be a critic, unwatched, develops into the uncontrollable impulse to be a cynic, an impulse that’s just as well-suited for bludgeoning as a baseball bat.

That is exactly what happened at my secular college, where the reminder to “be critical” served as our call to prayer, a call into a reflexive cynicism, often as unthinking as the very notions we sought to discredit.

And so, when the leadership team of my Christian campus fellowship decided we should all create “cardboard testimonies”— a popular evangelical activity involving writing a phrase about our brokenness on one side of a piece of cardboard and a phrase about how Jesus had healed us on the other — I was totally uninterested.

You do not simply change from one person into another. Jesus can heal us, yes, but it’s all more gradual than flipping a cardboard sign.

So while my friends shared their signs about Jesus healing them of eating disorders and loneliness and anger, I sat out. And as I sat in the audience with arms crossed and a cynical smirk, I think Jesus was gently laughing at me.

A few weeks later, I was standing in front of that same group, holding my own cardboard sign.

You see, the weekend after the other leaders shared their cardboard testimonies, our leadership team went on a day-long retreat. And on that retreat I found myself completely incapable of worshipping, of praying, of listening to people talk about God. All I could think about were the snide remarks echoing in my own head.

This music is just calculated to play with our emotions.

Healings are just products of wishful thinking and the placebo effect.

Are you hearing God’s voice, or just hearing what you want to hear?

I preferred sitting in my little cell of cynicism, but the ironic laughter of the mental voices created such a deafening cacophony that I couldn’t think — about God or about anything else. I needed it to end, to turn it off, to make everything quiet. And so, in front of the leadership team, I told them how I couldn’t pray, how I didn’t even want to hear from God, how I couldn’t respect anyone talking about God in a genuine kind of way.

At least, I tried to. From what I can remember, I think I mostly wept.

Then, the team member from the most charismatic background in the group, the one whose prayers I could least bear to listen to without silently groaning, knelt next to me on the floor, put her arm around me, and started praying.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” she said softly. Maybe she said it to God. Maybe to me.

And for one reason or another, this time her prayer felt like a surge of cool water. The blazing housefire of cynicism mysteriously sizzled out. It is, after all, hard to make ironic comments, even in your own mind, when you’re sobbing.

To those worried that I simply caved to irrational enthusiasm, fear not. Most often, I am just a sheep trying to sneak back to the poisoned pond of cynicism. For this reason, I appreciate the imagery of God as shepherd. It comforts me to know that Jews and Christians have realized for millennia that they too are clueless sheep-people who will repeatedly choose the poisoned pond without a shepherd to lead them back to pure, still waters.

As a mentor of mine pointed out, the root of cynicism is fear. We are afraid of being the fool. Scared of being taken in, duped, we look at everything askance. The more heartfelt and genuine someone seems, the more suspicious we become. Because if we’re not on the offensive, getting in the last “Well, that’s just…” word, then someone else might. 

In my darkest moments of cynicism, all I really wanted were “lofty words and wisdom” like the kind Paul talks about not using in 1 Corinthians 2:1. I didn’t want to hear about people being miraculously healed. I didn’t want conversion stories or whatever Paul means when he says “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (2:4).

But let’s face it — we’ve been taken in by the ridiculous story of an executed king who rises from the dead. We look like fools. But we know it’s true because we’ve experienced the king’s power and love through the Spirit.

And so, a few weeks later, I presented my own cardboard sign — my slightly hokey but heartfelt testament to the love and power of the Spirit. On the front, it read: “Cynic.”

I flipped it over: “Cynic in recovery.”

Jesus healed me, to be sure. I felt the difference — my mind felt like my own again, without bitter irony constantly crowding in.

Afterwards, someone approached me with words of encouragement that I haven’t forgotten: “the opposite of cynicism is joy.” I can’t remember who said it to me, but I think it’s true.

When Pope Benedict XVI notices our dearth of “unembarrassed joy,” he’s noticing the same thing as David Foster Wallace did: the modern world’s blazing housefire of cynicism.

We may believe, that with our bitter skepticism, we are saving ourselves from foolishness. But really, we’re resisting what Pope Francis calls the “evangelii gaudium,” the joy of the gospel. Without it, we’re stuck in a stifling, parched desert.

As the housefire of cynicism burns in the center of our souls, the soil around it dries and cracks until nothing good can grow anymore. Meanwhile, the joy of the gospel, like a river, threatens to overflow its banks, rush forward, and put out that fire. If we let it, the gospel’s good water will nourish the earth of our hearts, and put forward good fruit.