My sophomore year of college I was at an IV meeting when I made a smart remark (shocking!) that I don't now recollect. What I do remember was that a senior named Grant Hoffman, the virtual pinnacle of spiritual Goliath-ness in our community at the time, looked right at me and said, "Cynicism is a sin, you know."
If it had been anyone else, I would have told them to shut up. But it was Grant Hoffman, for crying out loud, so I still remember it to this day.
Cynicism is a sin. It is lazy and fearful. It is arrogant. It is fossilized skepticism. It is permanent defensiveness. It always distrusts. It is perpetually wary. It is self-indulgent. It is all about self-protection and fear--if I'm cynical then I can't be hurt, no one can touch me. Ultimately cynicism is isolation and death as distrust and the cynical protective wall cut us off from the life of the community that we were designed to gladly and freely participate in.
And it's more or less the default posture of much of our culture.
In thinking about the above desription of cynicism, the contrast that came to mind was the Biblical picture of love: patient, kind, not envious, not boasting, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeping no record of wrongs.
Cynicism cuts us off from the source of real life. A heart and mind saturated in cynicism cannot bear the fruit of the Spirit. Ultimately, the cynical heart simply becomes more and more cynical. It is cut off from all joy.
I know of a journalist who went to the satirical newspaper "The Onion" to do a story. The Onion is the world-wide leader in snarky, cynical news writing. The person doing the story sat in on a brainstorming discussion about "stories" they were going to write up and they expected it to be absolutely hilarious. But instead it was dead-silent serious. Everyone had grown so cynical they were no longer able to enjoy even their own jokes. There was no true joy in their work. Nothing was truly funny any more.
This is the high cost of cynicism in our hearts and lives. It is a sin, you know, and for very, very good reason.
2 comments:
Alex,
Every once in a while I check out this site and I finally decided to post a comment - perhaps in my cynicism I figured, "Why bother?" - just kidding.
I wonder if cynicism is like a lot of things in life, healthy to a measure but destructive in its excess.
I think Paul is pretty cautious in places like Ephesians 4 when he warns, "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming." There is a realism in Paul's perspective that the world in it's fallen state and left to it's own means is not going to be "for" Christians.
I think cynisim can protect us and cause us to ask good questions that Evangelicals are far too often reticent to ask. Questions like, "Is it possible that George W. is not acting in the best interest of Christians." There was a good article in the New Republic lampooning the book by David Kuo about his time in the faith based initative department in the White House. Their point essentially boiled down to, "Evangelicals place so much emphasis on testimony, that sometimes that means they don't ask the questions they should." In other words naivete is often the posture du jure for many in the church.
To be clear, I think there is nothing more destructive than unchecked cynicism - especially when it is directed towards the church. But I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water (many apologies for the cliche.) Rather I think the challenge is to figure out a way to live in the tension and complexity of life in a country that eats naive people for dinner but also nurtures cynicism as if it was the highest value.
I agree with Elizabeth's post here--Nate, I think the biblical word here is discernment, not cynicism. I think that there's a qualitative difference.
At least all my attempts at 'moderated cynicism' generally run afoul. But that's perhaps not true for everyone--especially spiritual giants like you!
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