For starters this is one of those words the never looks right to me when I type it. It seems all weird and no spelling actually feels right. So I have to rely on the cool squiggly red line underneath to help me out.

Cynicism is a pretty dangerous thing. To be cynical is to doubt the reality of something. Here are a few different ways to look at cynicism.

One definition correlates cynicism with skepticism. The idea that someone is always up to something contrary to what they say. Someone with ulterior motives would be another way to put it.

In a book titled A Praying Life the author says that cynicism is to be distant, leading to a creeping deadness that destroys the spirit. The book goes on to say that cynicism leaves us doubting and unable to dream. The idea here is that when we become cynical to life, we shut down our hearts and kind of just go through the motions unable to see the reality that’s right in front of us.

C.S. Lewis says that cynicism is seeing through something. He then goes on to say, You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.

Do you get what C.S. Lewis is saying here? He’s essentially saying where does cynicism end. When you try to see through one thing only to find yourself trying to see through the next and the next as well, you see nothing. Eventually, everything is something else and you don’t know what’s real and what’s false.

This word cynicism comes out of a study of Isaiah 29 as I prepare for a bible study I’m leading. While he doesn’t use the word specifically, this is what he’s talking about. He’s talking about dullness or dryness of faith and life. Isaiah is basically telling the people that they’ve been so cynical of the things of faith that now they don’t even see what God is up to because they’re essentially looking through it.

If we take the word cynical as our word of the day this week, we need to wrestle with where it’s found its way into our daily lives. Where have you been overly cynical? Where has cynicism made life around you so transparent that you can’t even see what’s right there in front of you?

Is it your job? Making you think that nothing you can do is good enough for your boss. Perhaps it’s in your marriage? He’ll never really love me the way I need to be loved. She’ll never trust me again. Maybe it’s in your other relationships? Everyone’s out to get me. No one trusts me. I’m not worth anything. What about your worship? Just going through the motions without a second thought. Your heart isn’t really in it so you’re just faking it til you make it.

Whatever area your cynicism has crept in, you need to deal with it. And there are two things needed to deal with cynicism in life: truth and direction. Both are necessary but we can’t have the direction without first seeing the truth.

Cynicism is like a pair of glasses that cause us to look through the moment at the intentions. And if we’re being honest, the intentions we see aren’t the real intentions but rather ones our cynical minds have made up. This is because cynicism brings a disconnect between our head and our heart.

When we are submerged in the truth of a given scenario, it’s like someone takes those crazy x-ray glasses off. Now instead of seeing assumed motives, we’re able to see the words on the page. We’re able to hear the real voice on the other end of the phone. We’re able to see the actions for what they really are and not for something we formulated in our heads. The only way to do this is to remove the glasses by putting on new glasses of the truth.

Like a bad prescription changes how we see the world around us, so also a cynical lens negatively impacts how we see life. The lenses of truth are put back on when we surround ourselves with people who have the truth. We need to be able to listen to hard things. Be challenged. We need to be honest with ourselves and those around us. And when we do, the truth will shift our eyesight from seeing through something to seeing something through it.

After we change out our glasses to ones filled with truth, we need to look in the direction the truth is pointing us. Now that we’re able to see a little more clearly, we can see what’s in front of us and what’s on the other side of the window C.S. Lewis referred to in his quote.

As we navigate the challenge of cynicism in our lives, we are forced to deal with our own demons. Cynicism isn’t someone else’s problem. You can’t call out cynicism in someone else. You have to see it in you. Take an honest look. Where have you been cynical? What truth have you missed by looking through it to see something that isn’t even there? What direction are you supposed to be going that you didn’t even know existed because you looked through the road map by your cynical thinking?