There are many genuine skeptics in the world. A healthy dimension of skepticism is good in a wise person. Skeptic, like so many words in language, has so many nuances of meaning that we tend to believe that connotation and denotation that fit our preset contextual meaning for it. The matter of interpretation may be helped or hindered by our constructions of various ephemeral factors in our experience. Prejudice, which is unsupported belief, without adequate reason, plays a part. The matter of context, when it is badly formed in us, can become ugly. The stronger we feel about our ideas the greater is the danger of attaching pride to them, rather than humility, so to distort truth. Students, even scholars, may fall prey to negative skepticism to the point of cynicism. Cynicism implies degrees of falsehood, likely conceived in the omissions, detours, influences of our experience, even from childhood, perhaps especially from childhood.
Early in my college days I heard about various skeptics, like Ambrose Bierce. He gained attention when he disappeared into Mexico, and was never heard from again. His writings seemed so acerbic about so many good things in life, like love of country or friends. He wrote The Devil’s Dictionary, part of which I read some decades ago. Nearly everything was twisted. Kauffman and Joshi write in their biography of Bierce: The faith of his fathers he shreds: A Christian is ‘one who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.’ A saint is ‘a dead sinner, revised and edited.’ He even rewrites the Decalogue: ‘Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife, unless / Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.’ This kind of writing gets the reader nowhere except to either gain applause from those already in the camp of negative cynics, and disappointment from those of us who find some themes too important to be treated in cavalier fashion. The matter is deserving of some attention so to alert the passers-by that this is cleverly written rag words, the ragweed of literature that crowds out flowers of serious thought. The skeptic/cynic, H. L. Mencken said of Bierce: . . . . he did not get the name of Bitter Bierce for nothing. Apparently Bierce, relative to Christianity, reacted to some of what he had taken from exposure to faulty contexts. One wonders if Bierce had been more factual and less caustic about daily life, his serious writings about the horrors of warfare, seen as a soldier during the Civil War, might have been taken more seriously. He distorted his gifts. His command of language and of observation in that war deserved a far more general audience than it received, or now receives. War should be told as it is – as Bierce did.
Cynicism as a gimmickry is sometimes funny. It entertains. If done cleverly it may pass for insight and intelligence. The manner in which it is used ought to inform us if it may be acceptable for purpose. The theme, of course, makes a difference. If it relates to human foibles, say in a family, it may have a purpose that can be addressed in the context of the whole event in which it is used. One has responsibility when it is brandished. Are we dealing with ideas and outcomes, or are we the receptors of cleverly formed language and the author’s distorted treatment of an issue? A president was once asked why he let-go an important counselor in his cabinet. He replied that the man put cases so persuasively that they were adopted, only to find they were faulty in application. Often our right is lost in just the opposite – poor presentation.
One is drawn to God by the ultimate realization that the nature of God is partly formed by truth, as it is also partly formed by love. There is a mystery feeling that truth is an important goal in everything related to man and God, but that it comes to mankind packaged in love. Whatever is good for us has element of affirmative truth in its context. It need not be dressed up, or down. It need not be clever, or gross or ordinary. It simply is gained in the context of faith that assumes love and truth so to guide or warn the receiver to accept or reject the conclusion. Jesus made clear to his disciples that he would not mess with them. He was of truth and light. Anyone distorting that mercy and grace of affirmation, even in its proclamation, has joined the support context of the emptiness of negative cynics. God is discovered in the search for truth in faith, in the understanding of affirmation. We are witnesses. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020