Ultimately, cynicism protects you from commitment. If things are not really going to change, why try so hard to make a difference? Why become and stay so involved? Why take the risks, make the sacrifices, open yourself to the vulnerabilities? And if you have middle-class economic security (as many cynics do), things don't have to change for you to remain secure. That is not intended to sound harsh, just realistic. Cynics are finally free just to look after themselves.

Perhaps the only people who view the world realistically are the cynics and the saints. Everybody else may be living in some kind of denial about what is really going on and how things really are. And the only difference between the cynics and the the saints is the presence, power, and possibility of hope. And that, indeed, is a spiritual and religious issue. More that just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels — what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds — all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world — just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.

Jim Wallis, God's Politics