We can lay down our cynicism

“You’d be surprised!” the transit employee said when we reported the lost phone. “More often than not, people finding a phone hand it in to our staff. Keep ringing until someone answers.”

She was right on both counts. We were surprised (and comforted) by this countering of the assumption that lost phones remain lost. And the phone was quickly returned – kindly recharged by the person handing it to us.

Though we’d like to expect such goodness from everybody, that can seem hard to hope for. Given things we see on social media and in politics, or even encounter directly, many of us conclude that cynicism is the wise way to look at life.

We certainly don’t want to drop wisdom in dealing with others, but cynicism only adds fuel to the fire and, from a spiritual viewpoint, is always inaccurate. Do we really want to be adding to the conviction that humanity is created materially, motivated purely by self-interest, and so disposed to misguided motives and deeds?

Instead, we can stand for the truth of existence presented in the Scriptures, which say that all are created in the image of Spirit, God – of endless goodness, spiritual light, and love.

The choices we make of what we hold in our heart as being real matters to us and others, as the psalmist recognized. He prayed, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalms 19:14).

What’s aligned with the divine Mind, God, is the outlook exemplified by Jesus. Jesus saw what God sees – our reflex glorification of Mind and our spiritual identity as the image of God’s unwavering goodness.

This Christ view resulted in Jesus’ healings, which showed that the opposite of cynicism isn’t naiveté but an empowering expectation of good anchored in the Science of our being – the truth of everyone’s spiritual identity.

This identity is described in Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere” (p. 516).

A cynical outlook subordinates “the facts of Science” to “the false testimony of the corporeal senses,” seeing others as the mortal man that isn’t God’s image. Such selective thinking would seem to separate us from the divine source of all joy, health, and harmony. Christ lifts us free from this joyless mental state that fails or refuses to see the spiritual identity of others, and it brings to light the consciousness that contributes to healing that cynicism cannot achieve.

Take, for instance, someone seeming to profit by trampling on the rights of others. Cynical resignation would concede to the belief in a mind separate from the one divine Mind. If instead we root our thought in the divine reality of everyone’s spiritual identity, we refute the deeper lie that man can be a mortal acting out of self-interest without caring about the cost to others.

As we do this, we might be surprised. Maybe a politician or political party we believe to be self-serving does something that sacrifices political expediency for the greater good. Maybe a news organization’s partisan bias gives way to recognizing the merits of, and fairly reporting, a story they would typically downplay or ignore. Maybe steps toward a just peace begin to emerge in a region steeped in war.

Christ reveals that cynicism is never anyone’s true mental makeup, and we transition out of it by affirming and accepting this. We can also firmly refute the belief that wrong thoughts can be contagious.

I experienced this on encountering Christian Science in my early 20s. In a moment of spiritual illumination, I recognized that a cynicism “caught” from media influences I’d been imbibing didn’t exist in Mind and so had no place in me as Mind’s image. I felt empowered to face the world’s problems with God-grounded hope.

Our thoughts are 24/7 companions, and it’s wise to choose these companions well. An antonym of “cynicism” is “cheerfulness,” an outlook Jesus commended in light of what he proved. He said “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Awakening to the intrinsically uncynical Christ view that is our true consciousness is following in Jesus’ footsteps. Christ enables us to lay down the imposition of worldly cynicism for our innate spiritual cheer and embrace a spiritually grounded expectancy of good – for our sake and the world’s.

Adapted from an editorial published in the May 6, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.