Something with which I struggle mightily is negativity. I used to be very proud of my cynicism, it was very much part of who I was as a person. In some senses I believed that it made me deep or mysterious or some such thing. I never wanted to be a sort of brooding upper middle class kid clad in all black listening to industrial music, I just wanted to do the deeply Scottish thing of being reasonably unimpressed with most everything that I encountered. Most of my friends would probably tell you that this made me a real pain, but it is who I was and is still certainly part of me. But since we always find our own annoying habits endearing I want to spend a moment contemplating what role skepticism or even cynicism play for the Christian. Is it taboo or can it be helpful?
This may not surprise you but in my opinion there certainly seems to be room for cynicism and not just because I like it but because the Bible’s narrative of humanity seems to be if not cynical at least a little skeptical about humanity’s abilities. By the third chapter of Genesis we learn that we are fallen sinners who have nothing in us that can save us. That is not a message that you would get from your average Disney Princess movie and certainly there does not seem to be a lot of material there by which to usher in the age of Aquarius. Yet at the same time hope is one of the great virtues found in the Christian. And so it would seem that the sweet spot for humanity would be to have a realistic view of ourselves while at the same time hoping for something better.
In the Gospel of Matthew before the crucifixion there is a sort of odd verse spoken by Jesus where he states, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” This line can be somewhat confusing if we take it to mean that Jesus was not really all that enthused about dying for our sins (but really who could blame him). But there is another way of interpreting the cup. If we take the cup to be what humanity is about to do to Jesus then Jesus could be asking God if just for once humanity would take a better path; if they stopped acting in the way that they have since Adam and Eve first sewed fig leaves together. Jesus was hoping that humanity could change and not need a Saviour. There it is both a resignation to human nature and the hope for a change for the better. And that seems to be the place we need to be.
There is an Arabic saying which is sometimes ascribed to Mohamed which says, “Trust in God, but tie your camel.” This seems to be the balance that we need to strike. We need to see that God has called us to something greater and more beautiful and more wonderful, but we also need to have realistic expectations of how the world works.
It seems there are two opposite mistakes that we can make in this world. We can think too highly of humanity believing it to be capable of things that for which it has never shown and sadly when taken to an extreme we see the tragic effects of this in places like Jonestown or Pol Pot’s Cambodia where the ultimate realization that the crooked timber of humanity is disappointing created the belief that it must be eliminated. The other side descends into such cynicism that we see those truly good things which come from God as being some how malicious and wicked. This is what Jesus referenced in Mark’s Gospel when he said, “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” The unforgivable sin is attributing the works of God to Satan.
The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne said when describing two early Greek philosophers, “Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears.” There may be days where we laugh at the condition of humanity and other days when we cry about it, but we never must lose sight of the fact that God can work through us to do wonderful things.