| Cynicism, alumni and attentiveness
Preoccupation with other interests
can displace commitment to Christian identity and witness. Yet for alumni, this
is more likely a symptom not a source of such displacement. Enamored with the celebrated relativity
of truth, cynical perceptions of Christian identity go beyond issues of displacement
or even explicit laments concerning the church. For alumni in a pluralist age, Christian
faith and witness are regarded as “too Christian”! Accordingly, alumni relinquish
their Christian identity. As assorted spiritual foci poison wells that once nourished
with the word of God, newly embraced but lazily conceived agnosticism anchors
cynicism instead. This occurs at first in discrete and supposedly benign increments
relating to distinctive Christian identity and testimony. Initially, alumni might frame their
cynicism within a “spiritual journey” or “healthy scepticism,” yet cynicism inducted
by either suggests a lack of attentiveness to grace and truth in Jesus Christ. v There is a vast difference between a genuine sense of humility in human limits before the disclosure of God in truth and a cynicism that is easily generated in a blithe assumption that we can say nothing about the truth. Embracing relativity of truth eventually gives way to cynical assertions about adhering to any sense of truth. Cynicism is folly. While jealousy closely guards what it has and envy secretly admires another in what they have, cynicism is devoid of both feelings. Cynicism will poison its own well in the hope of poisoning another. It is an expression of self-contempt, even if its aim is to deride and deprive others of the comfort or confidence found in the inspiration and focus of faith. Cynicism is a form of deprivation directed toward others but it leads to a state of self-deprivation. Expressions of cynicism can appear liberated, yet this apparent freedom exists in a tiny world. Cynicism can seem clever, yet it creates nothing; its apparent creativity is only creative in destruction through self-destruction. Tragically, a cynical person will not know when they have become cynical because within the illusions generated by cynicism, that person will think that “enlightenment” has been achieved. Cynicism within Christian faith is a contradiction; it is precisely the loss of faith in Christ that makes cynicism possible. Faith resourced by grace and truth is the antithesis of cynicism, which is unwilling to relinquish its intrinsic grounding in hubris or pride. How would you know you are losing your
faith? Would you know when your faith is
shipwrecked? (I Tim. 1) To assume that we could recognise these possibilities,
does not account for self-deception. Significant movement away from previous
expressions of commitment can easily be given a positive spin. A shift in allegiances
suggesting a loss of faith can be interpreted as “self-realisation” or even as
post-Christian “enlightenment.” Yet this assumes that such perceptions are not
skewed or mistaken. Even if self-perceptions are compared
with similar experiences of others, a shared opinion can also be selective and
mistaken. We are capable of both personal and collective self-deception. The epistle depicts shipwrecked faith as having rejected commitment
to good conscience, yet conscience may
be massaged to endorse as sound, what in reality has become shipwrecked. Only one point of reference is accurate
for ascertaining soundness or shipwreck, good conscience or skewed perspective.
Before Jesus Christ we know we are shipwrecked as having compromised grace and
truth. By continual and attentive reference to Jesus Christ as our source of reality,
we can experience and affirm unequivocal grace and truth—without despair in our
failures or self-deception in steadfast faith. v Self-critique is a legitimate responsibility of Christian faith, community and mission. Yet self-critique can be confused with depreciation to the point of cynicism about Christian faith. Many aspects of the Christian church have been examined and will continue to be examined intensely; yet to lurch into scepticism and subsequent cynicism is to begin a trajectory of depreciation from which a person may not return. The gospel speaks to self-compromise in human life and transformation through grace; in Christian faith, it is an illusion to assume that we can “get our act together” if we try harder. If we could, we would not speak of sin, contrition or grace and the power of God for salvation but merely of ignorance and education. Self-critique is always a responsibility in grace. The psalmist prays search me O God; the epistle writer says judgment begins with the family of God; Paul reminds us that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Self-critique is not scepticism; it is the opposite, for the courage of genuine self-critique is a possibility in grace when in truth, a person is consciously before God who knows all and can forgive all. Scepticism that diminishes Christian faith, because there are perennial expressions of self-deception among Christians and in the church, relinquishes the very source by which this self-deception can be recognised and changed. Without recognition of this and the gospel that makes explicit God’s grace and truth—the sceptical become lost in endless conjectures, leading to the void of cynicism. In the absence of gospel, scepticism that depreciates Christian faith ends in cynicism that cannot affirm grace and the transformation of people amid sins that are so evident to the sceptical—except the sins that incubate cynicism. In this, the cynicism of alumni is nurtured by lack of attentiveness to grace and truth. v As much attentiveness is given to the grace of God in the gospel, as much then, life is illuminated with veracity in Jesus Christ, in excess of any cause for cynicism. In attentiveness to grace and suspension of agendas framed to enhance status or advantage among others, we become conscious of treasures given in grace. In attentiveness to Scripture, despite the adjudications and fences that can be cast about it, excess grace and truth is given to hearing for ears to hear. In attentiveness to the good news, despite the historical failures that stymied and threatened to negate it, we can become eager recipients of the Spirit’s resources, fanning into flame gifts that reaffirm the great relay of Christian testimony to grace. In attentiveness to the congregation of faith, whatever its fallibilities and failures, the rekindling of faith can occur in listening together to the word of God. Faithful testimony to the gospel has always occurred in the risen presence of Christ as entrusted to every contemporary generation of Christian faith. We cannot “graduate” from the living sources of Christian faith and its perennial imperative to testimony and remain Christian. We cannot embrace cynicism without also poisoning faith. In attentiveness to grace and truth in Jesus Christ, any presumed primacy of our opinions is superfluous. Our lives are exceeded by the reality of God in love as source and end of our existence, who in Christ invokes unreserved gratitude, trust and faithfulness in response. For Christians, attentiveness to the grace and truth of Jesus Christ is an imperative that will always be met with excess resources for faith and witness. Selected
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