Cynicism takes root when you disengage, when you engage you reside in the fantasy.
Let me first be careful to define what I mean by “fantasy.”
Fantasy isn’t the same as fallacy. I mean fantasy in a more emotional sense. Like when you’re on vacation somewhere amazing you are in a fantasy that everyone is having as good of a time as you are. You are able to relax, you pour into your loved ones in a way you couldn’t with the normal daily pressures of life, you have no care or understanding about the day of the week, and you are under the assumption that everyone around you must be as relaxed and having the same good time you are. That’s the fantasy. But the reality is that for most people it’s just a Monday. There’s nothing special going on, at all. The lady cleaning your hotel room or serving your family dinner or the guy who drives your shuttle or the myriad of people behind the scenes making your trip great– it’s a work day for them.
You are the puppet and they are pulling the strings of your fantasy. You gleefully and willfully shut off your mind to even think about those moving parts. You are living the fantasy and it’s good.
A fallacy isn’t that at all. It’s when you know you can’t separate what you know is going on behind the scenes and you go through the motions anyway. It’s taking your family on a great vacation, watching them live the fantasy, but in the back of your mind you know you are running from your problems… your car is getting repossessed while you’re on vacation or you’ve just lost your job but haven’t told them because you want them to enjoy the trip or you’ve got cancer but haven’t told your family.
And so you fake it. You let those around you believe in the fantasy but for you it’s a tortuous fantasy, a lie.
Ministry is Complicated
Ministry life is complicated. We all know that. We know too much to enjoy the fantasy is quite the same way. We love our co-workers but we know their struggles, their weaknesses, and “what’s really going on” often takes precedence in our mind.
Yet, we guide people to live in the fantasy. We even use language to describe it. We want people to be “in” and many churches have even used gambling language to ask people to “go all in” for our ministry. Having been part of both being in a church where people lived in the fantasy and been at churches where we saw people step into that happy place, it’s a beautiful and good thing. Entering into the fantasy allows God to work in wondrous way… things which shouldn’t be possible are and most importantly lives are changed.
We ask people to embrace the fantasy that our church is “it” and the more they buy into the fantasy the more growth that can happen in their lives. (Just like on vacation, right? If you don’t buy into the fantasy you’ll never relax… and if you don’t relax you’ll never enjoy the experience. So you allow yourself to enter into it. It’s a willful thing, a social exchange.)
This isn’t bad. We all do it. You can read through Acts and see this played out in the first century church. People dove into the fantasy! I mean, families sold everything they had because it was so good!
But when it becomes a fallacy it is bad. Especially when it happens at church. When an inch below the surface lies conflict or staffing issues or hidden problems, the staff puts on a happy face and hopes people buy into the fantasy because they all know that it’s kind-of-a-fallacy. The children’s pastor has kids who hate them. The small groups pastor hasn’t been in a small group in 20 years. The youth pastor is a great manager but doesn’t really love teenagers, at all.
People convince themselves that they love their jobs or that their motives are pure. Yet quietly, behind the scenes, everyone can’t wait for the pastor to retire. Or they’ve experienced the wrath of anger brought down on them by the board when they ask question or dream about things outside of the scope of the fantasy. They mistakenly wondered out loud, “What would happen if our church embraced all kinds of people from all kinds of lifestyles?” And once they stepped out of bounds of the fantasy they’ve experienced something darker… like seeing Mickey Mouse smoking a joint on his break at Disneyland… they’ll never be the same.
In my ministry life I have a hard time embracing the fantasy because I know too many people who’ve have experienced the fallacy. Confessionally, I think half the time I’ve wondered if I was living in the fantasy or the fallacy myself. So when I go to church today I want to buy in but I struggle.
I find it easy to disengage, therefore I find it easy to step back enough where I’m no longer inside the fantasy but am comfortable observing those outside while also observing inside those behind the scenes.
On the one hand this is a valuable vantage point. One for which I’m thankful. I’m able to help those creating the fantasy see what is and isn’t working, what’s believable, what isn’t.
But, confessionally, sometimes it eats at me.
Just like at the end of the Wizard of Oz you’re left to wonder… would it have been better to not know? Or are you better knowing?
For me, engaging in the fantasy is a choice. I chose it. I want it. I have decided that it’s not a fallacy. That my faith is real, that everything I know and have been taught is real.
But it’s a rational choice.
But sometimes? I just wish I could go back to not knowing.
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