Leaders aren’t Cynical, The Character Trait That Might be Holding You Back

Do you find yourself given to cynicism?

For me, I think my cynicism is inbred. I can not really remember a time when I really trusted in someone. Maybe when I was very little I still trusted in an ultimate truth out there, but it is hard to remember. As I got older, I did discover there was some good in the world, but I would often find that at some point everyone has some fault or failing that creates a tragic flaw in their personalities which effected my life and the lives of others.

Cynicism for me seems to be the breaking of trust. In that breaking of trust there also seems to be concept that there might be an ultimate truth out there, but that thought seems to always be crushed by the realities that are all around us. The God of the Bible is represented as the ultimate truth (John 14:6). The concept of truth is something totally separate from our existence as fallen creatures. That there is one Thing separate from our understanding of the world and trustworthy (I Samuel 2:2).

Seeing that tragic flaw in people and in the world around me, it is hard for me not to be cynical. However, if I want to not be cynical, I have to trust, and to trust, it seems, is to believe in the impossible. The impossibility of a human being being holy and trustworthy like God.

A good friend of mine is a model in what faith and trust might look like. Many say of her that she has the "gift of faith." When her only son tried to hang himself in the woods one day, it was a miracle that the firemen found him in time before the noose strangled the last breath of air out of him. Now for almost a year, doctors and experts have told her to learn to accept the inevitable reality of the situation that her son will be a vegetable for the rest of his life.

However, my friend does not believe in the inevitable, she believes in the impossible - that God is God and He can do impossible things. She does not cling to the words of reality of what the doctors have told her and of the bitterness of why this might have happened to her son. She clings to the faith that her son will be alright and one day walk up and out of his bed.

And now she has begun to see the "walking out" of that faith, in that her son becoming aware of his surroundings and starting to move his head and hands with conscious effort. The doctors are still not saying much about his total recovery, but the boy has already surprised them. Meanwhile, my friend will cling through all the doctors' reports to her faith and her Impossible God, in hopes of Unseen and Impossible things.