Faith Venture

It’s way easier to be negative, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s much harder to be hopeful, positive, and proactive.

Everywhere we look, we see words meant to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

That is the easy thing for media to write. Mainstream media and influencers alike. It generates likes and views.

It is much harder to analyze the good with the bad. The think of hopeful, positive, and proactive.

People are cynical. Oh, but think about the many people you know who are kind. Who will carry a bag for you, open a door, smile and say Hi.

Many good people exist. Also many good and helpful services to which we can contribute.

Should we find ourselves mired in negativity and fear, we can take small steps to change. We can change our information sources. We can look for just one positive thing in the next person we meet. We can notice beauty. We can take one step toward generosity.

True, real joy always comes to us only as a present. It originates in God. Human joy is a share through grace in the joy of God, in God’s nature, which is nothing but the sphere of supreme joy. The sources of true joy, therefore, are found where the creature waits for God.—Ladislaus Boros.

Joy must be differentiated from pleasure. It is deeper and more lasting. 

Joy also differentiates from happiness, something transient, nice while it’s here, sad when it wafts away.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, writing in The Bed of Procrustes, “A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a ‘solution’ and creates a problem.”

When we, as disciples of Jesus, are in conversation with someone, do we lead with a solution? Or, perhaps, listening to the other person begin with their problem and perhaps help create a solution?

Does the feeling that cynicism invades your soul, surrounds your spirit alter you? It seems everywhere. Conversations. Media. Everyone has sinister ulterior motives. No one can be trusted.

Singer and songwriter Nick Cave observed of himself:

Cynicism is not a neutral position—and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.​I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. 

He later changed his outlook:

It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help. It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.​

Blessed are those whose natural compass of life has guided them to hopefulness and helpfulness. It’s harsh to need a devastating event to change. 

You can find good people everywhere. You can find evil. Discernment is knowing the difference with enough distance to avoid being sucked into contempt and cynicism.