Cynicism. In many ways it seems like the most logical, natural way to wrap up a year like 2016. There have been so many unexpected deaths: Natalie Cole, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Gwen Ifil, Florence Henderson, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder. (Whew. And those are just a few.). All of these have been layered over a world hell bent on violence, and a campaign so full of insult and vitriol that even some of the campaigns’ mangers were at each other’s throats after the election. So it was a surprise, but a very small one, when many of my friends who had been supportive of the protests in the Dakotas, responded cynically to the news that the Army Corp of Engineers decided to stop the pipeline construction, at least for now. This was supposed to feel like good news. Within hours of the news going public my social media feeds were flooded with cynical claims that the announcement was a ploy just to get protestors off the land, that it wouldn’t be honored by the powers behind the pipeline, or that it was just a stalling tactic and a PR move.
This cynical turn would be negligible had it not been such a sudden, broadly expressed, and widely accepted sentiment. Even if these fears prove to be true, the speed that they were communicated and embraced said more about the habits of our hearts than our insight into the world. We have been steeping in a rhetoric of deep conflict and distrust for months and years on end. We have become so accustomed to enmity that assuming the worst no longer feels like pessimism, it feels like a practical defense mechanism, a way of tempering or restraining our hopes. It seems as if lowering our expectations actually seems like a useful, if not necessary practice to prepare us for when the other shoe inevitably falls.
I understand its appeal. Presuming the darkness is an endeavor that is rarely disappointed. But I am a Christian, and this is Advent, and it strikes me that cynicism, in its many forms, runs cross grain to the hope I am to be cultivating, especially during this time. Therefore it has no place in my life. So, Now what? What do we do when the most logical, natural conclusion, is incompatible with Christian practice and convictions? What do we do when it runs cross grain to our faith?