Grace Will Not Let Us Go

Resurrecting Hope in a Cynical Age

The church signs and social media feeds tell us Easter Sunday is over. The lilies are wilting despite my best efforts. The Easter vestments and paraments may be used for a few more Sundays, but the brass quartet is long gone. The family has left town with a note on the counter to remember to return your aunts ’ deviled egg tray. But here’s the thing: resurrection does not pack up after brunch. Easter is not an epilogue. It’s the explosion that rewrites the whole story. And if you think that’s just wishful thinking, then perhaps you have made peace with something grace never allows: cynicism.

Cynicism is the soul’s slow death. It hollows us out from the inside, not with loud denial but with quiet resignation. It’s what Søren Kierkegaard might have called despair—the sickness unto death—when the soul turns away from itself and from the God who created it.[i] It’s what Cornel West names more bluntly as “soul murder,” a form of nihilism that kills the capacity for hope, love, and prophetic imagination.[ii]

We dress it up in snark and call it realism. But it’s just despair with better PR.

And let’s be honest: the church hasn’t always helped. Too often, we’ve served up grace like it’s a consolation prize instead of the disruptive, death-defying force it is. But God’s grace isn’t a Hallmark sentiment or a pat on the head. It’s not spiritual Febreze for the rot of the world. Grace is, as Robert Capon writes, “wildly, preposterously, wastefully generous.”[iii] Grace is the scandalous assertion that God still shows up—even in the graveyards we thought were final.

Of course, cynicism isn’t born in a vacuum. Cynicism cannot survive on its own. It is a survival instinct in a world where the powers that be keep flexing like they own the place. When empires strut across the global stage with violence as it currency, and when economies treat human lives as disposable, it’s easy to believe that power is the only language that works. That the cross is just a symbol of defeat. That resurrection is nothing more than myth.

That’s how the powers want it. Cynicism is the soundtrack of empire—because if you believe nothing can change, you won’t bother resisting. You won’t expect the lowly to be lifted or the hungry filled. You’ll settle for strongmen and systems, because at least they’re predictable.

But as Fleming Rutledge reminds us: