America and her people are facing a litany of problems, and many of them only seem to be getting worse with time.
So I understand the impulse to despair, to doom and to accept defeat as final.
But as much as I can sympathize with it, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s one of the gravest mistakes we’re making.
And I don’t say that from a place of detached or innate optimism, but because I’m speaking from personal experience.
The more I think about it, I’ve been somewhat of a cynic for most of my teenage and adult life.
I don’t mean that I always assumed the worst in everyone or everything, but that the older I got the more it felt like the default.
I didn’t bother applying for countless opportunities because I assumed I wouldn’t be chosen. I remember leaving my retail job one day in college, a handsome stranger walking up to me, and kind of freezing, telling myself it was a prank and completely ignoring him.
Part of what drove me to purchase my house in the first place was a combination of economic and romantic fear. I fell hard for someone, was convinced I’d never feel that way again, and that I couldn’t wait around for love and marriage if I ever wanted to own a home. And with Barack Obama using Joe Biden as a sockpuppet while BlackRock and similar firms snatched up single family homes, I was afraid my window was closing.
I don’t know that most people struggling with cynicism actually think of themselves as cynics. I know I didn’t.
I thought I was being realistic. I thought I was protecting myself. I thought that if I could predict disappointment before it actually arrived, that I’d lessen its impact.
I don’t blame myself or anyone else for this instinct. The logic is sound. And more than being rational, it can feel like the natural response to your circumstances.
I grew up in Boston, and my biological father lived in New York. I remember getting so excited about the weekends I was supposed to see him.
Almost immediately after waking up, I’d run to the upstairs balcony where I had the best view of the street, waiting for him to pull up.
I remember becoming giddy every time I saw a car that vaguely resembled his, only for my smile to fade when I saw it keep driving, and realized it wasn’t him.
I’d sit up there and watch the road for hours, sometimes until it got dark.
I don’t know how many times he left me waiting on the balcony before I learned to stop going up there altogether.
I know this isn’t a unique or profound experience, but I think it demonstrates the psychology of pessimism well enough.
The world is cruel, sadistic, and seems to hunt out innocence with the sole aspiration of beating it out of us in one way or another.
It seems desperate to disillusion us, make us bitter and give us reasons to believe that things can’t get better.
But we all have one much more important reason to believe that they can.
And that is our Father who is in heaven, that so loved the world He gave His one and only begotten Son so that we might be saved.
And I know that to some people, that will sound dismissive and generic. Some people want to believe it, but struggle to. And some know vaguely and factually that it’s true, but have a hard time reconciling it with their current realities.
I’ve been a Christian my entire life, but for a long time, when I heard someone talk about finding joy and hope in the Lord, it felt foreign to me. It felt like they couldn’t possibly grasp what I was going through, like they had to have been born with a different disposition than I had, and like they were completely delusional if they thought platitudes from the pulpit could remedy real pain.
And then I experienced one of the hardest periods of my life, where my faith became its most fragile. I felt like I was trying to keep a candle lit in a hurricane and I was afraid it wouldn’t survive. I was afraid I wouldn’t survive.
But in my rage, sorrow and distress I continued to turn to the Cross.
Even though God definitely hasn’t doubled what was taken from me, it reminds me of something I remember a priest saying about how Job’s prayers are indignant and temperamental, but God still calls him faithful for them.
As I cried out to my Creator again, and again, and again, wondering if I was praying to no one, He eventually made His presence known and gave me a comfort that I can’t explain but wouldn’t trade for anything.
For months, it was unbearable. It seemed like God either hated me or had abandoned me entirely. And then things got easier. And then a full year later I was an entirely different person. I’d become the best I’d ever been and it was only possible through my suffering.
I can’t point to a specific day where I’d realized God changed me. I couldn’t tell you how it happened. All I know is that it did.
And I finally know what it means to have joy that doesn’t depend on what’s transpired or what’s to come, but on the Alpha and the Omega who remains the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.
It’s not that I’m certain that my material conditions will improve or that my every prayer will eventually be answered the way I want it to be, but that I know He is good and He always has been. And even if things don’t go the way I hope they will, I trust His character and His will.
That being said, I’m obviously not immune to anxiety, agony or any other human emotion.
I actually wept as I wrote this, partially in gratitude for all that God had done for me and partially crushed under the weight of all I’m still dealing with.
But when I’m overwhelmed or paralyzed by what I feel, I lay it before the Prince of Peace, no matter how many times I have to repeat it, because I know that I can’t protect myself or change anything for the better by cloaking myself in pessimism. On the contrary, I think it actually makes everything worse and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
God tells us to have hope in book after book and verse after verse, probably because it’s one of the most important things for us to do, and probably because He knows how hard it is for us to do.
And if hope feels out of reach for you right now, you aren’t alone. But if that’s the case, I think the best place to start looking for it is in heaven.
“And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” Matthew 13:58
what do you think?