Hope Deferred
The primal and preeminent question in this generation is not about the existence of God.
The primal and preeminent question in this generation is not about the existence of God. No, our sincere cynicism asks: “Is there anything to hope for? Is there anything that changes me and the world?”
On May 19, 2018, Prince Harry of England married Meghan Merkle in Windsor, England. The event was marked by the usual fanfare of such weddings: famous people, extravagant clothing, international media, commentary, vows, sermon, bridal vail, and love. A few unique things happened: Meghan walked herself two thirds the way down the aisle until her future father-in-law, Prince Charles, walk with her the last third. Meghan was the first black person to marry into the Royal family. Even more unconventional, she also wasn’t of nobility, had been divorced, was an actress, and an American. This wedding, despite Harry’s distance from the throne and Meghan’s lack of “status”, became the most watched royal wedding in history. More than Harry’s older brother’s wedding to Kate Middleton and his father’s wedding to Lady Dianna.
The morning after a journalist for an international magazine and cable news network wrote an article with this headline: “This Wedding Changes Everything!” The journalist went on to note everything I mentioned and expound on how the ceremony transformed international politics, racism, sexism, and even religious strife all in one swoop. However, the other headlines from that day in the United States were about the president being subpoenaed, a shooting at a school in Texas, and the falling apart of nuclear talks with North Korea. And yet, a wedding in Windsor, England had changed everything.
It’s understandable to hope in that type of transformation. It’s a lovely sentiment. Maybe the love and union of two highly famous people could change the world? After all, fame facilitates change. Plus, they are two highly educated and talented people; which, in our post-enlightened viewpoint, leads to the greatest types of change. Education, talent, and reason are the beginnings of world transformation! Add to all these factors: ethnic and historical backgrounds, tv ratings, and wardrobes. It’s hard not to hope: This wedding changes everything!
We love to think it can, even when we all know it doesn’t. The world doesn’t work that way. The memory of that wedding has faded behind the realities of a pandemic, protests, and political turmoil.
Fame, education, talent, power, and personality do not solve the world’s deep problems of injustice and evil. Here lies the problem: if all the talent, power, fame, and beauty in the world can’t defeat the anxiety, depression, anger, and angst within your own heart; how could it transform the world?
Maybe science and technology can. One of the great human achievements in this area was putting humans on the surface of the moon fifty years ago. The scientist and engineers proclaimed shortly after the event, “This accomplishment changes everything! If we can achieve this, no problem is too small!”
Technology giant, Hewlet Packard, ran an ad campaign featuring this slogan to boast the power of artificial intelligence: “Intelligence Changes Everything!”
I watched Steve Job’s announcement of the first iPhone live in an apartment in Los Angeles. I believed it had the power to make the world good again.
The same was true for the splitting of the atom, human flight, combustion engines, and plastic, even even long before that cement was heralded as a world changer. Technology has come up short. While many of our inventions have solved some problems; they have also facilitated a more efficient destruction of human lives and the earth.
My favorite athlete is LeBron James. We’re the same age, we’re married, and we have three kids. After that, our similarities end, and yet he is a powerful force in athletics, culture, business, and education. A few years ago, he and other Nike athletes ran a highly regarded and awarded campaign that featured black and white photos of the athletes as children holding their fist basketball, golf club, and tennis racket. In the corner of each photo were handwritten words: sports changes everything. The ad was great and I bought a pair of sneakers that day. It promised so much: that games and athletics can redeem hardship, build families, and renew neighborhoods. Yet, despite the powerful moments, entertainment, and financial fortunes made through sport, it hasn’t changed the world. You can walk abandoned Olympic venues across the world and know sports doesn’t change everything. For every LeBron, you can encounter dozens of kids who were scouted, used, and neglected. For every moment of inspiration and peace; there’s dozens of stories of cheating, abuse, and greed. If only games played by phenomenal athletes could change the world.
If not fame, education, and science, maybe politics. In January 2017, President Barak Obama gave his farewell address in Chicago in front of his loving family, his staff, colleagues, friends, and fans. In this speech, the Ivy League educated, Nobel Prize winning, Grammy Award winning, best selling author, and leader of the Free World who had spoken before the United Nations and commanded the most powerful army in the world said: “What we desperately need in this country is a change in our hearts.” After all the laws fought for, speeches given, fundraisers held, military actions taken, and negotiations won, the “hope and change” president looked into the eyes of his country and said: nothing will work unless we ourselves change.
Implied is this: elections, education, fame, power, laws, military, Hollywood, and weddings can heal our broken world or at least can heal us. It also tells us, we’re searching for something that will fix this mess.
These promises and messages create cynicism. We know those things don’t fix the world. So, what does?
Jesus.
What you are doing with Jesus — his identity, teaching, life, death, resurrection, and mission — is the main thing happening in your life. Whether you acknowledge him or not, whether you’re wrestling with him or not, Jesus is what your life is all about. The history claims Jesus himself makes reveal a reality that dominates our existence in one direction or another.
Award winning novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, summarizes, probably accidentally, the the message of Jesus: “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
Kingsolver is highlighting a well kept secret: life doesn’t function without hope. Our primal humanity beckons us to long for a horizon that will bring a new day. It is survival. Hope steers our lives from morning to evening, from month to year — from birth to death. Who do I want to be? Where should we go? How should I live? What do I want? How should I spend it? What should I buy? Who do I vote for? How do I want you to behave? What should I buy? What should I eat? Who should I love? All these questions find answers only in our hope.
Most of our hope is inherited from family, stolen from friends, or absorbed from those around us. Unexamined hope will spend your life. Therefore, the least you can do is figure out what you hope for.
Hope is both the things you long for and the method in which they will come to fruition.
If you hope in a progressive or conservative society, you also hope in the election of progressives or conservatives. If you hope in that, you spend time concerned with, worried about, and persuading people toward a candidate. Why? Because your hope is the transformation of society into a particular political reality and those hopes take actions.
If your hope is a healthy life, it doesn’t stop there. Hope steers our lives. The hope isn’t simply a healthy long life, it becomes our daily diets, supplements, exercise, and disease avoidant behavior.
Hope embeds itself in daily action. Unexamined hopes percolate into actions and attitudes we sense but don’t understand. Often we’re discouraged but don’t know why. We’re disappointed in others for what we ourselves believe are superficial issues. We get depressed at the outlook of the world or the state of our inner souls. We’re anxious about outcomes we don’t remember deciding were important. We’re lost in a sea of hopes that guide us while simultaneously knowing those hopes won’t work. We’re too disoriented and disappointed to hope.
For the person who grew up within a Christian-leaning culture, there’s likely a deeper disappointment or even despair because of Christianity’s apparent lack of transcendent hope. If you think back on youth group meetings, you might pinpoint the hopes as something to avoid. As you listen to pastors preach on politics, you’re left feeling like the hope of Christianity must be so feeble a ballot box can overturn it. The desire to maintain cultural relevance seems irrelevant to a God who is supposedly sovereign. The longing for bigger churches built to scale feels more like a Home Depot business plan than the world made new.
Depending how deep you were into church you might be left with hopes that proved so deeply false you’re unsure of where to go now. Ultimately, if you were raised in the cultural west over the last 40 years; you likely encountered a Christianity without transformative hope. Hope in recruitment, hope in growth, hope in influence, hope in power, and hope in the battles of the cultural war; but never a hope in a transformation that would raise broken to whole, dead to life, war to peace, grief to celebration.
Scott McKnight accurately states: “If the gospel you’re preaching isn’t about transformation, you aren’t preaching a biblical gospel.” As a pastor, the mass rejection of “Christianity” in my generation excites me. It reflects humanity’s internal barometer to seek satisfaction in a transcendent and transformative God. Most of us haven’t heard the message and purpose of Jesus.
For the follower of and believer in Jesus, we’ve said we want our entire lives shaped by the reality of Jesus. We want to live within his kingdom, truth, love, and joy. One of our primary problems is we rarely look directly at him. Jesus is God made flesh, yet we prefer to talk about what others say about him. We claim him as our hope, but rely on others to transmit that hope to us. Some of us are afraid of him. Some of us are discouraged by him. Some of us doubt his ability to transform. Some of us are distracted by urgent anxieties. Some of us prefer to quarantine and sterilize Jesus as an idea sequestered in a domain by itself. We admire him from a distance.
I’m writing a series of posts that will outline and explain Jesus’ believable claim to be the certain hope of global change — from the smallest soul to largest social disorder. I’m writing so we might understand our hope and live under it.
Thanks for the reminder to name my hope and examine how my life reflects it! It demands my time and attention and this is a call to invest that time.
Love it brother Brad, well put!