Mere Truth is Loosed Upon the World

To answer the questions on my last post, I do believe that all cynics live a painful life, simply because God did not design us to live without hope; however, I do not believe that cynicism is the only recourse for those in pain. Of course I write largely from my own experience of myself and other people, but I'm not sure that that necessarily discounts what I have to say; I can't exactly write from someone else's point of view.

Before exploring the topic of Christianity and cynicism, I would like to note that cynical attitudes spring from one of two causes, and that answering a cynical person depends largely upon identifying these causes. These two causes correspond to the intellect and the emotion; some people are cynical because they are emotionally wounded, while others are cynical because of intellectual filters through which they view the world. In dealing with intellectual and emotional cynicism, we must remember the Proverb that tells us to "answer a fool according to his folly;" that is, we must answer emotional cynicism with emotion, and rational cynicism with rationality. One of the major problems with contemporary society is that it has witnessed modernity's unfortunate propensity to give coldly intellectual answers to emotional cynicism, and has therefore decided that postmoderns must return the favour by impotently flinging emotion at cynicism that demands an intellectually rigorous challenge.

From a Christian perspective, intellectual cynicism is conquered by realism. Through Christ, God has revealed to us the nature of reality; as we allow this revelation of reality to mold our perspectives, "intellectual" cynicism will be unmasked as a lie that is not grounded in reality. I stress the truth of Christian realism and the unrealistic nature of cynicism because the struggle between Christianity and intellectuall cynicism is largely a battle over the definition of reality. In contemporary society, cynicism has gained much ground by pointing out the fact that secular optimism - whether openly secular optimism, or secular optimism thinly veiled as Christianity - has no grounding in reality. Historically, we have witnessed the erosion of anthropocentric Enlightenment optimism as an increasingly Nietzschian pessimism reveals the unrealistic nature of this optimism. The destruction of this hollow optimism is just; however, Nietzschian pessimism has no more grounding in reality than does Enlightenment optimism. If we settle only for this dualism between pessimism and optimism, we are left with a bleak choice; either we must choose to groundlessly trust ourselves, or to groundlessly mistrust ourselves. Either way our decisions are arbitrary; we can excercise the tyrannical Enlightenment pursuit of power, which lacks the demonstrable ethical grounding necessary to keep it in check, or we can surrender to postmodern pseudo-pacifism, which is the Enlightenment pursuit of power masquerading as a rejection of that same power. Contemporary postmodernity gives us a wide variety of career choices - we can either be wolves, or wolves masqerading as lambs.

Christianity provides a fitting answer to this miserable postmodern crux. Instead of presenting another worldview that depends upon external verification (that is, a worldview that seeks its ultimate justification in fallible human constructs such as science, "nature," or history), Christ presents himself as the revealed standard by which all things must be measured. For instance, before asking whether Christ is a demonstrably historical person, we must first ask whether our construct of history is demonstrably Christian (I do not here mean to denigrate the study of history, but rather to critique the improper usage of it in Christian - and "Christian" - circles); I do not, of course, mean to question the fact that Jesus lived on earth in full physicality, as recorded infallibly in the gospels, but rather to question the methods of both conservative and liberal Christians, who insist on measuring Him according to narrow and fragile 21st Century constructs of history. God, I am sure, does not mind being measured by our highly limited measuring rods - after all, he allowed the first century Jews and Romans to fully judge Him by their contorted standards - but I think I had rather imitate his disciples in knowing and following Him than imitate the High Priest in judging Him.

If Christ is the ultimate grounds of reality, then cynicism must necessarily be exploded by the former's sheer inexorability as ultimate reality. Put in practical terms, hope is not a tame, sentimental idea which we weakly deploy because we like it a bit better than misery; rather, it is an incontrovertible fact, based in Christ, which overwhelms us and shatters our cynicism as effectively as the cliff shatters the storm tossed ship. Faith is not deliberate blindness to the cynicism that surrounds us, but, rather, it is the ability to see ultimate reality, which is the glory of God, and thereby to see that, in the light of eternity, cynicism is a nasty but impotent joke. Love is not a sentimental ideal that is sappy at best, and implausible at worst; rather it is embodied in an alarmingly persistent God, who will hunt us down even if make our beds in the very depths of Sheol. Thus, cynicism is shattered, not by the ungrounded benefits of socially useful virtues, but rather by the non-negotiable truth revealed through Christ and His Word.

In the next post, I will discuss the Christian response to emotional cynicism.