“What gives you hope lately?”
I was sitting in the audience listening to a panel of smart people discussing a social issue, and the moderator asked this question. One by one, each panelist listed off something good they saw happening in the news. Each offered that little taste of goodness as a reason to hope that the future would turn out well.
In other words, their hope worked like this:
Folks, I think you see the problem here. If our hope depends upon what surrounds us most closely in space and time, we’re going to run out of hope when we need it most.
What happens when you’re in a long stretch when things don’t go well?
To find nitty-gritty hope in hard times, we don’t just need more cheery decorations telling ourselves to hope. We need to base our hope on something sturdier.
As an anthropologist, I study the ways our cultural surroundings teach us to hope. I’m convinced that one big impediment to getting justice done is that a lot of us hold on to the wrong sorts of hope.
Last week Christianity Today published an article I wrote—Not Just Any Hope Will Do. In it I tell a story about a certain king who hoped with delusional hope. (No, not the one at the brunt of protests lately, but you decide if there’s any resemblance).
“He cared only for outcomes that would be favorable for himself, surrounding himself with counselors willing to whitewash realities he didn’t like. He expected troubles to resolve easily: just a little battle, like a half-hour sitcom. He clung to power and longed for a mythical past when he had even more power. He was terrified of real danger but also terrified of having his sin exposed. He hoped for a future of more control, more power, more of himself.”
It’s easy to point fingers at a foolish old king, but folks, we absorb plenty of stories teaching us to hope like that, too.
The good news is we’re also surrounded by people who can teach us a more resilient hope. We can especially learn it from people who spend long years in the parts of the graph above where things aren’t going well (like Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Hope is a contagious thing. We can catch deadly delusional hopes from people around us, but we can also catch life-reviving and healing hopes. As I’ve written about hope for my next book, I’ve been collecting inspiring teachings about hope. Here are a few I think you’ll find revitalizing:
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? - Veritas Forum Podcast with Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson
The Roof Always Caves In - Comment Magazine article by Kate Bowler
Meditations on the American Dream - Hedgehog review article by Angel Adams Parham
And just for y’all, here’s an unlocked link to my CT article, Not Just Any Hope Will Do.
Thanks for toughening up our hopes together.
For still more thoughts on hope, check out my earlier newsletters on hope here.