confessions of a sentimental cynic

On Volume 83 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal (an excellent assessment of contemporary culture, including movies, books, the arts, psychology, philosophy, ethics, etc, from a Christian perspective) there was an interview with Dick Keyes about cynicism.

Keyes placed cynicism (which he defined as the confidence that you can unmask the positive surface of people, institutions, and God in order to see the less than flattering motivations of greed, pride, lust, power, etc.) on the opposing side of a continuum as sentimentality. Both are to be avoided because they are a false response to a broken world, where cynicism says that brokenness is the last word, and sentimentality says it wants to be naive and be caught up in happiness. Cynicism is a danger for relationships and spirituality for it is impossible to recognize love when one suspects that everyone, including God, is into their own power and wants you to be a support of their power. A cynic is unable to love and be loved because one is forced to manage their image and presented self since they assume everyone else is doing the same thing. Keyes' conclusion is that one does not even want to find a middle ground on this spectrum, but rather transcend it. The means by which to do so were the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. These are backed by "biblical suspicions," where Jesus teaches us to have a controlled sense of suspicion . . . unfortunately this point was not explored very deeply. So I am left wanting to go out and purchase Keyes' book Seeing Through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion (and the other book recommended, The Culture of Cynicism).