"Does being cycnical really equate to being negative? Does negativity exist only in a void of hopelessness? I am not sure if they are or aren't the same thing. Toward the end of his trials, Job was pretty down and negative, but I am not sure he did not have hope.
Anyways, enough I am rambling.........."
I don't know that cynicism equates to negativity, but it is definitely embedded in the prose of a cynic. Recall that the there first has to be an established level/standard of honesty or morality that is held in contempt in order to identify a cynic. I think negativity then becomes a catalyst or method of dissengaging from those levels.
I mean when we were kids and played "tag" there was a standard of not wanting to be "it" because if you were "it" then it meant that the others were not "it" and you would have to tag them to pass along the title of being "it" (I think I just set back the English language 5 years back with that sentence). We all accepted the standard that things were better if you were not tagged. If you were it, then you single purpose was to change the existence of those around you and the only way to be safe was to pass the identity to those who ran from you. Then haul ass away and make the pathetic defense of "no tag backs." No matter, even if you were not it, you had to constantly be on watch of getting tagged.
What I really mean is this...You are right that in the moment of being hopeless, you have a choice. To bring perspective down to a lowered standard where you exist or raise the standard to the point that you experience despair. It is using the negativity to bring life down to being tagged "it" using the negativity to make it seem that unless you have achieved a status, then your current existence is the same as being "it." Try this, can you find a trace of sentiment with the following statements, "it is never so bad that it can't get worse" or "No matter what I do, it just doesn't ever seem to be enough." Sorry this is so depressing right now. It'll change for the better in moment.
In fact, let's introduce Job as you mentioned earlier. As my a Sunday school teacher once said about him, "Job had a bad day." How he explained the loss of Job and the level of grief was lost in my adolescence. However, one message was clear, he had a bad day and yet upheld the honor of God. Let's establish a few things like the standard.
"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil." - Job 1:1
In the exchanges between God and satan, there was the positioning of why Job was the way he was. We get a glimpse into the fact that Job was the man he was because of his relationship with God. That was the identity that did not waver in the midst of loss in the worst way. Even as his body was afflicted and even his wife bid him to curse God and die. Even his friends did not get it, but in the end fell in the level of doing what they thought was right in their eyes and were held accountable for those things.
"7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job's prayer." - Job 42: 7-9
In the end, Job knew that one thing was crucial, his identity in God. Still, he did not wane, but had the integrity to uphold the honor of God as it was being challenged. In doing so, God blessed him and raised the level to a new standard. In that sense of it, I feel like Job never considered everything to be about himself and exclude God. So he was never "it" though we see him as the central characted in this story. To Job, this was still about God and so I don't know that he took the negativity and surrendered to despair. To be a cynic would have been an admission of doubt in God and compromising his own integrity of who he was in God.
That last line just brought my thought process to a halt.
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