UnCynical
Cultivating a Hopeful Heartby Paul Grant
"Congratulations, Graduate. Here is your Diploma." Thus read a
message scrawled onto the toilet-paper dispenser.
I was in a restroom of the engineering building, at a prestigious state school I recently visited in the West of the United States. A more bitter assessment of the value of a college education would be hard to find. This crude joke was also a great example of that self-protective attitude called cynicism.
Cynicism is an orientation toward the world that looks for the morbidity out there. Cynics train themselves (and each other) to read ulterior motives into every act of apparent goodness and beauty. The real world is ugly, the cynic says, and we delude ourselves to think otherwise. That statement of loyalty is really just a sales pitch; that profession of love is just a ploy.
The cynic claims special insider knowledge. The cynic holds him- or herself apart from the rest of the world – from those unenlightened folk who believe in authentic action and true feelings. It is a stance of self-protection: if I can parse what the real message is, I won’t be had.
Cynicism is a cult of individualism. It holds that no groups are to be trusted. All human structures, the cynic says, deceive, hurt, abuse and worse, so the only way to survive is to build castles around one’s heart.
The trouble is that cynicism is also delusional. When we view the world only through sour eyes, we can gradually lose the capacity to taste sweetness. Instead we call it saccharine. What starts off as a conceit of super-human vision ends up as rather pedestrian blindness.
Ultimately, cynicism is surrender to hopelessness. In a world where someone is always out to get you, where someone is always out to make money off you, cynicism chooses to retreat rather than resist.
What a contrast it was when Jesus took off his robe and washed his followers’ feet. How was he able to serve people at their ugliest? It wasn’t by holding his nose and doggedly doing the right thing. It was because of his sense of security.
John put it like this: “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.”
It was not because he thought it was his station to wash the feet of his betters. It was because he knew who he was and how it was going to end. What is a little dirt when you know where you’re going? What’s a little humiliation when your identity is secure?
Because of Jesus, we have hope. Our big choices mean something, and our small choices mean something. If we know who we are, because of our secure identity in Christ, we are free to fully enter the messiness of community. If we know where we’re going, we can choose to risk all, to expose ourselves to profound suffering. Our eternal hope is way bigger than the sadness around us.
In light of the staggering reach of Christ’s love, we are free indeed. We are free to relax our self-protective stance. Because we know our lives have value, we can allow ourselves to belong to others.
Because our eternal future is bright, we can enjoy the here and now; we can equally let it pass by without desperation.
And if we know where we’re going, it really doesn’t matter if our diplomas are worthless. Better yet, if we don’t have to defend our hearts against the disappointment of a meaningless degree, we can open our eyes wide enough to see the value of our education and our pursuits. That degree wasn’t worthless after all. And that footwashing was more than symbolic.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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