a reflection
One thing that I learned working in tobacco when I was young is that if you want to keep your boss happy, don't talk about the negative effects of tobacco. Employers want employees who believe in the cause or at least talk like they do.
I was telling this to a co-worker the other day, and he pointed out how cynical that way of thinking is and compared it to the way that soldiers in the military wouldn't talk about if killing is wrong or not (I don't know if they actually talk about this or not, I imagine that some probably do).
It made me think about the pervasiveness of cynicism within our culture. There's sort of a cynicism of politeness whereby a person is expected to either not talk about certain things or to talk about them in a certain way; to talk the party line. I mean, I enjoy politeness as much as anyone, and I guess that it's a very fine line where politeness fades to cynicism.
I was talking to a pastor once about things that I had learned from travelling and I told him that when you visit some place new, you should tell people all the really positive things about the place. People seem more likely to like you if you tell them that you like their town and won't like you if you say that the place sucks. He challenged me on this by asking what if the place really does suck?
I guess that it's easy and often even helpful to by a polite cynic. It's much more challenging and makes a person much more vulnerable to be deeply honest. Maybe cynicism is at the heart of a lot of today's world's problems?
2 Timothy 3:1-8 (The Message)
1-5Don't be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They'll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they're animals. Stay clear of these people.
6-9These are the kind of people who smooth-talk themselves into the homes of unstable and needy women and take advantage of them; women who, depressed by their sinfulness, take up with every new religious fad that calls itself "truth." They get exploited every time and never really learn. These men are like those old Egyptian frauds Jannes and Jambres, who challenged Moses. They were rejects from the faith, twisted in their thinking, defying truth itself. But nothing will come of these latest impostors. Everyone will see through them, just as people saw through that Egyptian hoax.
