Is it possible to grow up without becoming a cynic?
Quipped Archie Bunker sometime in the 1970s, “The Lord might be smilin’ on the sheep, but they still wind up as lamb chops.”
In 1989, Don Henley released a song that climbed to Number 8 on the “Top 100” …
“Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn’t have a care in the world
With Mommy and Daddy standin’ by
But ‘happily ever after’ fails
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales …”
Later in the song, he repeats that haunting phrase: “We’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales.” As the song’s aging protagonist mourns the loss of his parents’ marriage and intact family, the ideals of American government and politics, and his own relationship with the girl he loves, his deepest longing is for “a place where we can go that’s still untouched by men.” In other words, he’s grappling with the fact that he must live in the real world – where innocence has been lost.
The song is arresting in its realistic portrayal of growing up, and concludes with the sad reality that the young couple – though they share “that same small town in each of us” – must go their separate ways.
To various and sundry degrees, each of us can relate – in a world that can be marked by crushing and debilitating discouragement – to the struggle to avoid cynicism. Sooner or later, most of us become accustomed to tempering our “wildest hopes and dreams” out of fear that – if we fully abandon ourselves to them – we’ll only sail into the next storm of disappointment and despair.
Sang Henley with profound despondency, “They’re beating plowshares into swords.” And echoes the sobering refrain and the song’s title, “This is the end of the innocence.”
You and I walk around with our own personalized version of, “It ought not be this way.” We’ve seen enough. Already. Teenagers can’t relate to this like someone in their 30s, at whom life has already thrown a number of curveballs. And so it goes as we grow older. Cynicism becomes more and more of a danger. If we’re not careful, we start living by Alexander Pope’s twisted beatitude: “Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
I’m not denying that disappointment, on this cursed and fallen planet, feels like a crowded and overpriced resort for which we’ve already paid – we all have to check in there on occasion – but I’m saying that we don’t want to live there. And I don’t believe that God wants us to live there.
When it’s cold and rainy, we need a good story to warm our souls.
Author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien forged a special friendship with C.S. Lewis. Lewis was initially skeptical of Christianity, calling it a fairy tale, to which Tolkien wisely replied, “But Clive, it’s a fairy tale that’s really true.” This conversation proved to be monumental in the reorientation of Professor Lewis’s philosophical and theological presuppositions. Lewis would later write: “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
I think Lewis meant by that that we’re all – regardless of our age – secretly longing for a higher and greater story that makes sense of the one we’re seeing with our eyes. That’s why Lewis spoke so frankly to all of us: “Someday you’ll be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
What you and I need is a beautiful story that speaks purpose into our pain. Friends, we have one: “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!” 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Here’s how Sally Lloyd-Jones of Great Britain – now Manhattan – describes the Word of God: “The Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s about God and what He has done. It’s the story of how God loves His children and comes to rescue them. It’s a Love Story. It’s an Adventure Story. And at the center of the story is a baby – the child upon whom everything would depend. And every single story in the Bible whispers His name.”
We call that grace. Lloyd-Jones goes on to write: “When you lose the story that’s running like a golden stream underneath all the other stories, you’re left with the idea that the Bible is a collection of random-seeming stories about various Bible characters that we’re supposed to learn lessons from – almost like an ‘Aesop’s Fables.’ And a book of rules that God wants us to keep so He will love us. And we lose the glorious truth of the Bible that we were loved before even the beginning of time. That God had a plan. That no matter what, He would never stop loving us … with a wonderful, never-stopping-never-giving-up-unbreaking-always-and-forever love.”
Did you get that?
A wonderful, never-stopping-never-giving-up-unbreaking-always-and-forever love!
Here’s what I want you to consider today. Your disappointments may be hard to stomach, but …
Could it be that your disappointments actually confirm what God says about this world?
It IS broken.
But not for long. For now, we have to feel the sting of damaged relationships … and lost jobs … and friends who weren’t really friends … and bodies that seem to slow with each passing year.
You and I were made for better things. We were made for intimacy and wholeness and truth and everlasting life. The world is broken, but it’s being redeemed. In Christ, it’s all coming! For now, we worship with great expectation. The brokenness here only strengthens our desire for the perfect world that’s promised and well on its way.
So, if you’re disillusioned by this world’s shiny idols … if you’re frustrated by disappointments and despair … if you feel poisoned by fairy-tale promises that’ve left you high and dry – and not just a little cynical – I offer you the perfect antivenom: the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. The story is 100% true and trustworthy: He is risen!
Sang Don Henley, “I know a place where we can go to wash away this sin.”
So do I.
Pastor Charles
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