"Why are Christians so. . ."

My friend Wuchen pointed out that if you type the phrase “Why are Christians so…” into the Bing search engine, the suggestions provided are a bit depressing. It looks like some hyper-pessimistic round of $25,000 Pyramid.

I saw the list and shook my head. I hated that the phrase “Why are Christians so loving” or “…generous” wasn’t there. Yet I confess I already knew it wouldn’t be. My foot was caught again in cynicism's mire. Christians....

Cynicism has its merits. It's not always out of place. But it's celebrated as intelligence in and of itself, when really it's a way of describing someone who doesn't want to get hurt by being blinded by naiveté.  Cynicism is often an anxiety. It's refusing to fall for anybody's crap, and therefore assuming crap is what everybody is up to. But in protecting ourselves from getting duped and hurt, we also protect ourselves from recognizing anything beautiful. Our society hails this, a generation with an eyebrow cocked at others while assured all big, powerful, beautiful things are a trap, as "realistic". 

I yanked my foot out of the mire and remembered disenchantment might be en vogue, and that Christians do need some help looking more like Jesus, but there's far more good to the story than bad. I knew the results of a suggested search list wasn't an exhaustive science, but I started Bing-ing again to make good on the rest of my hunch.

So it's not just Christians. It's popular apparently to think of all humans the same way. Christians don't look like Jesus, and therefore are bad. But in the skeptical, wound-wary social conscious, people don't even look like people. They all suck.

Except for a few apparent fetishes, apparently even doctors are in the crosshairs of our negativity. I guess modern thought has no room for them either.

That fifth commandment still taking a beating I see. 

 This one is true.

This has been a good reminder to neither entirely ignore nor listen too closely to the social slogans on what or who's bad. In fact, it's a good sign I'm asleep when I start believing too easily in the most popular disenchantments. Or when I on impulse want to be on the right side of mass judgment so to seem as intelligent as the aggregate social critic demands. Wakefulness means I see with my own eyes. That I shed templates and actually pay attention to the whole story, the bad and the beautiful. And I will do my best to go on being a loving, gracious, potentially naive intellectual with everyone.