CYNICISM—SEEING LIFE THROUGH DARK GLASSES

Last updated on: November 5, 2024 at 1:09 am by Ben Witherington

CYNICISM—SEEING LIFE THROUGH DARK GLASSES 2024-10-29T06:00:40-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Do you remember the phrase cock-eyed optimist? Well perhaps not, but it was a phrase used about persons who were or are overly naïve about their life, or their country, or their world. I am reminded of the famous speech of William Faulkner when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969 in Amsterdam. Here is a portion of what he said, bearing in mind that he was speaking while the U.S. was in a land war in Vietnam, and our relationship with communist regimes in general was not good.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

Perhaps you are not old enough to remember this speech, which came out as I was heading off to college. But I suspect today many would call this speech hopelessly naïve, watching wars in Ukraine and the Middle East spin out of control. I must confess that I do not have hope for the future based solely on the factors Faulkner mentioned about—namely because humans have a capacity for compassion and endurance. All human beings are fallen creatures, or to put it another way, sinners, and we live in perhaps the most narcissistic age and culture in the history of humankind. We live in the selfie age, where it’s all about me.

Rather than listen to Faulkner, and be naïve about human potential for good, I would rather listen to a WWI British Chaplain, Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy who saw the horrors of trench warfare in Europe and yet was able to write his famous poem entitled Faith, which says:

FAITH HOW do I know that God is good? I don’t.
I gamble like a man. I bet my life
Upon one side in life’s great war. I must,
I can’t stand out. I must take sides. The man
Who is a man a neutral in this fight is not
A man. He’s bulk and body without breath,
Cold leg of lamb without mint sauce. A fool.
He makes me sick. Good Lord! Weak tea! Cold slops!
I want to live, live out, not wobble through
My life somehow, and then into the dark.
I must have God. This life’s too dull without,
Too dull for aught but suicide. What’s man
To live for else? I’d murder some one just
To see red blood. I’d drink myself blind drunk,
And see blue snakes if I could not look up
To see blue skies, and hear God speaking through
The silence of the stars. How is it proved
It isn’t proved, you fool; it can’t be proved.
How can you prove a victory before
It’s won? How can you prove a man who leads,
To be a leader worth the following,
Unless you follow to the death–and out
Beyond mere death, which is not anything
But Satan’s lie upon eternal life?
Well–God’s my leader, and I hold that He
Is good, and strong enough to work His plan
And purpose out to its appointed end.
I am no fool, I have my reasons for
This faith, but they are not the reasonings,
The coldly calculated formulae
Of thought divorced from feeling. They are true,- 6 -Too true for that. There’s no such thing as thought
Which does not feel, if it be real thought
And not thought’s ghost–all pale and sicklied o’er
With dead conventions–abstract truth–man’s lie
Upon this living, loving, suff’ring Truth,
That pleads and pulses in my very veins,
The blue blood of all beauty, and the breath
Of life itself. I see what God has done,
What life in this world is. I see what you
See, this eternal struggle in the dark.
I see the foul disorders, and the filth
Of mind and soul, in which men, wallowing
Like swine, stamp on their brothers till they drown
In puddles of stale blood, and vomitings
Of their corruption. This life stinks in places,
‘Tis true, yet scent of roses and of hay
New mown comes stealing on the evening breeze,
And through the market’s din, the bargaining
Of cheats, who make God’s world a den of thieves,
I hear sweet bells ring out to gayer, and see
The faithful kneeling by the Calvary
Of Christ.
I walk in crowded streets where men
And women, mad with lust, loose-lipped and lewd,
Go promenading down to hell’s wide gates;
Yet have I looked into my mother’s eyes,
And seen the light that never was on sea
Or land, the light of Love, pure Love and true,
And on that Love I bet my life. I back
My mother ‘gainst a whore when I believe
In God, and can a man do less or more?
I have to choose. I back the scent of life
Against its stink. That’s what Faith works out at
Finally. I know not why the Evil,
I know not why he Good, both mysteries
Remain unsolved and both insoluble.- 7 –

I know that both are there, the battle set,
And I must fight on this side or on that.
I can’t stand shiv’ring on the bank,
I plunge Head first. I bet my life on Beauty, Truth,
And Love, not abstract but incarnate Truth,
Not Beauty’s passing shadow but its Self.
Its very self made flesh Love, realised.
I bet my life on Christ–Christ Crucified.
Behold your God! My soul cries out. He hangs,
Serenely patient in His agony,
And turns the soul of darkness into light.
I look upon that body, writhing, pierced
And torn with nails, and see the battlefields
Of time, the mangled dead, the gaping wounds,
The sweating, dazed survivors straggling back,
The widows worn and haggard, still dry-eyed,
Because their weight of sorrow will not lift
And let them weep; I see the ravished maid,
The honest mother in her shame; I see
All history pass by, and through it all
Still shines that face, the Christ Face, like a star
Which pierces drifting clouds, and tells the Truth.
They pass, but it remains and shines untouched,
A pledge of that great hour which surely comes
When storm winds sob to silence, fury spent
To silver silence, and the moon sails calm
And stately through the soundless seas of Peace.
So through the clouds of Calvary–there shines
His face, and I believe that Evil dies,
And Good lives on, loves on, and conquers all–
All War must end in Peace. These clouds are lies.
They cannot last. The blue sky is the Truth.
For God` is Love. Such is my Faith, and such
My reasons for it, and I find them strong
Enough. And you? You want to argue? Well,
I can’t. It is a choice. I choose the Christ.

(This poem is in Kennedy’s collection of poems called ‘The Unutterable Beauty” and is in the public domain, like Faulkner’s speech).

The reason I’m not a cynic about our current cultural and political malaise, is because of my faith in Christ, and his ability to change human lives from hopeless to hopeful, from faithless to faithful, from loveless to loving, and more. I like Sting’s line ‘I lost my faith in politicians/they all seem like game show hosts to me’, or worse in some cases they seem like pawns in the hands of the Liar in chief— Satan.

I do not believe in the syncretistic and false religion called Christian nationalism, which is neither Christian, as it is based on hatred and division, both of which are tools of the powers of darkness, nor is it true patriotism in a country that has on its statue of liberty ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 to be placed on the pedestal on the statue. At least then we realized we are overwhelmingly an immigrant nation (with the exception of the native Americans—Indians), and immigrants are one of the things that has made this nation great. My great uncle was a doctor on Ellis island in the early 20th century and he saw so many of those immigrants coming into the country with nothing but their hope in their hands and a willingness to work hard and be Americans who believed in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the latter of which I would amend to ‘the pursuit of holiness’. My great uncle had great stories to tell about these immigrants which could be called ‘profiles in courage’.

It is a sign of the current sickness of our country that we want to blame most of our problems on immigrants. But think for a minute about the drug crisis in our country. Friends, the source of the problem is not primarily at the borders of our country but at the borders of our hearts. If Americans didn’t want dangerous drugs and were not willing to pay for them we would not be supporting the drug cartels in other countries. Period.

I write this at the cusp of perhaps our most important national election in our nation’s history. I hope the American people will use critical thinking and vote, even if they think they are voting for the lesser of two evils. As for me, I remember a line from a hymn and another from a famous missionary—

“My hope is based on nothing less/ than Jesus’ blood and righteousness…”

And in the words of a missionary facing possible death at the hands of those he was trying to share the Gospel with—‘the future is as bright as the promises of God’.

Amen and amen.

Home and Religion

Education and Religion

Uncategorized

Take off your tainted glasses

Previous Post

November 4, 2024

The Conclave-- The Thriller of the Year

Next Post

November 6, 2024 Wanna Get Away after All that Election Mess?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz