A few years ago I had the privilege of spending a week with a group of Christian painters and sculptors. God showed me something important through being with them. He showed me just how cynical I have become.
There was a lot of talk among these artists about joy in creation, about creativity, and about an appropriate childlikeness of faith, delighting in God. And for the first few days I found that hard to connect with. And as I reflected it occurred to me that the main reason why that is: I have been trained to be cynical. The first question I’m trained to ask of something is ‘how is this wrong?’, or ‘how is this trying to manipulate me?’, or ‘how can I outflank it?’, and this predisposition seeps into my relationship with God.
So for me, a major challenge of being a Christian academic is not to let cynicism become the leitmotif of my Christian walk. I think this cashes itself out in two ways, and they are both contained in the song of the creatures and elders in Revelation 5:8-13:
And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
The two things that characterize this song I think are awe, and joy. There is a humbling and profound sense of God’s awesome greatness as the elders fall down below the Lamb with the incense, and there is a joy and a passion in the harps of verse 8 and the singing of verse 9. This is not just an acknowledgement, it is a celebration. And the day that I stop being able to stand in awe of God, or stop praising him with joyful song in my heart, is the day when the de rigueur cynicism of academic life has choked my walk with the Lord.
