Skepticism

How oddly appropriate that the same night I have an amazing chat with my mother, I stumble across a post about being a lifelong cynic.



I’ve always vacillated somewhere between skeptic and cynic, depending on where I was in my life. The above picture is the perfect example of how, at 3 years-old, I wasn’t buying all this Santa Claus jazz, and I certainly wasn’t going to sit on some strange man’s lap. Neither of my parents ever felt any need to carry on the charade, as it was obvious from early on that I wasn’t buying any of it. Tooth Fairy? Easter Bunny? Just give me the candy/coins, and I’ll play along if I must, but until my firmly skeptical father provides me with legitimate evidence of their existence, I’m not buying any of it.

My family never went to church, but my parents were always an amusing juxtaposition of belief sets. My father grew up in the Pentecostal Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, and later found himself disillusioned by organized religion. Science became his belief system, and he wasn’t going to believe in anything that hadn’t been extensively examined and scrutinized. My mother grew up Buddhist/Shinto in Japan, which while ever-present and permeating every part of the culture, was not particularly rigid. She has always had a flexible approach to spirituality, and has frequently incorporated new things into her belief system, whether it be a loose interpretation of Christianity, or all things paranormal.

Somehow this eventually resulted in a skeptical 10 year-old attending a bible camp without either myself or my mother fully realizing it was a bible camp. A Christian family friend suggested it, and while we understood that the camp was Christian, I was expecting a regular camp with the occasional prayer and grace at mealtime. Rather than the canoe trips and orienteering I had been expecting, we spent quite a bit of time memorizing bible verses in a camp-wide competition to earn the most points for our bunkhouse. This was novel and amusing, as I had never read a bible in my life, and the content of the verses floated entirely without context in my mind. Every evening, we were presented with an impassioned sermon from our pastor/minister about how failing to take Jesus into our hearts would result in eternity in purgatory. Some nights he would emphasize the tragedy of missing out on the experience of allowing Jesus into our hearts, other nights he would go on and on about the fiery terror that would await the non-believers among us.

I weighed these sermons rather heavily each night. In part because I was a compulsive people-pleaser, but also in the interest of covering my bottom-line. I wasn’t about to believe in something that I wasn’t being provided concrete evidence of, but I wasn’t keen on taking the chance of being wrong. I decided to make a bargain with God/Jesus, if he did in fact exist; I would do my utmost to be a good person and generally aspire to conduct myself as Jesus would, and he would agree not to throw my ass into the fires of Hell. I decided that God had to be a reasonable and practical guy, and would understand the arrangement.

Cynicism/skepticism rarely limits itself to the spiritual and fantastical, however. It wasn’t long before I was cynical about the institution of marriage, true love, the nuclear family, and any and all things that are found in Hallmark cards. Naturally, I somehow ended up with a romantic that I initially regarded as hopelessly naïve and in need of protection from the ugliness of reality. As much as we were opposites, my ex softened the cynic in me, eventually making me realize that believing in something can make a lot of things possible that my cynicism never did. Being hard and cynical didn’t spare me from sadness or disappointment, and having hope really didn’t cost me any more. He gave me a lot of courage to work towards things that I otherwise would have given up on, simply because I didn’t believe they were possible.

My cynicism/skepticism is still something I both value and struggle with. There are situations where it has protected me from unscrupulous people, but there are situations where it has also prevented me from connecting with genuine people. Today was a reminder that sometimes I need to set my cynicism aside and just let things in. I thank the universe for that lesson . . . and God, in my own way.