…is with the truth….Hope cannot take root in unreality or untruths.”
I am currently rereading After the Locusts: Letters from a Landscape of Faith, by Denise Ackermann, a theologian from South Africa. Each chapter in the book is a letter to someone she loves. The chapter from which the above quote is taken is written to her best friend, Elfriede.
I appreciate deeply the grounded-in-reality approach she takes to understanding hope. In this post, I am going to quote various selections from this chapter, “On Locusts and Bodies”, particularly from pages 81 to 83.
First, here the author is quoting Calvin:
To us is given the promise of eternal life–but to us, the dead. A blessed resurrection is proclaimed to us–meantime we are surrounded by decay. We are called righteous–and yet sin lives in us. We hear of ineffable blessedness–but meantime we are here oppressed by infinite misery. We are promised abundance of all good things–yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst….But what would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope?
And some further thoughts:
To believe that Christ was raised from the dead is not just a consoling thought about how God has triumphed over humiliation, suffering, and death. It is in fact a contradiction of suffering and death, a divine protest against suffering. And it does not only deal with the future. Hope is sterile if it does not transform our thoughts and our actions here and now. Hope opens a future outlook that embraces all of life, everything we do and know, and that includes sickness and death.
This is a theme which I keep coming back to. Hope, if it is to be real, has got to be able to deal with and exist in the context of the realities that are. In one very real sense, hope is based in a belief that what we see is not all there is. But, in another sense, if hope cannot take into account the the realities and sorrows we actually see around us, today, then it is dishonest and unrealistic.
Hope has very little currency if it is just a ‘pie in the sky when we die by and by’, a trick masquerading as optimism covered with a religious veneer. True Christian hope is tougher, more realistic…
Very intriguing approach there, writing a book contained of letters the author wrote to individual people in her life. Sounds like a good book.
e–
my current understanding of hope is ’something good will come of this, even though things don’t look good right now.’ your post fleshes that out nicely; one has to make as uncluttered an assessment as possible of what ‘things don’t look good right now’ is made of.
and too often we think the hoped-for changes, or corrections, are to be implemented by someone else, when in fact hope is what motivates us to respond once the assessment is made.
i know, it looks like a mr. fixit way of looking at hope, but what can i say? mr. fixit is too much a part of my nature to give it up to a non-response way of being.
peace–
scott
p.s. for another mr. fixit post about responding to injustice, take a peek at this:
http://mission.squarespace.com/-journal/2008/9/22/justice.html
i think this is one of the best posts about responding to injustice i have ever read.
Christianne, it is a very good book. Much heavier reading than is suggested by my saying it is a compilation of “letters”. But, also, I think, much more personable than the same ponderings written in theologian terms, without the personal connections.
Scott, thanks for your Mr. Fix-it approach and contributions to these thinkings on hope. Like I just mentioned in responding to Phil’s comment on another post, my introverted in-my-brain response is much further along than the words have caught up to.
I agree with you that a response way-of-being is an important part of hope. (And I’ve also continued to ponder the thoughts stirred by the very good post you link to.)
And I’m very much on the same page of hope taking place in the context of a real and honest assessment of what “things don’t look good right now” is made of.
So, I was thinking I agree with you as far as your comment goes, but, for me, it’s at the extreme edges of the assessment and the ability to rise to the occasion to respond to that assessment in practical and hope-filled ways, where another level of hope that I’ve been grappling with begins.
The hope that lets me sit with a friend and be as practically involved as I can, and then still sit with her at the other end of those responses, where practical responses don’t begin to make a difference.
Realizing that we can be practically involved in making a difference in situations that seemed hopeless, is a great thing.
But, at the other side of that, I still find suffering and despair that doesn’t have answers. It’s like hope can stretch me from despair through practical involvement. But if it can’t stretch even beyond that and still say, “What I see is not all there is”, for me, that hope falls short.
And I guess I’m not saying (I’m still thinking on all of this) that at that outer limits, all of a sudden, once there’s nothing practical to do to make a difference, that hope isn’t tied in with people. Hope in those outer limit places, where very little fix-it-ness can touch, still often manifests itself and find expression through relationship and connections. Even when there is not one practical thing I can do to make a real difference.
It’s not one or the other, of course. A spiritual hope for something more, outside of relationships, rings a bit unrealistically hollow, I’m thinking. The hope that comes through being a part of the Kingdom of God cannot be separated from the practical and transforming responsibilities and relationships in that kingdom. But, at the same time, if my hope is completely dependent on the limits of individual people or even people in relationship, as much of a difference as that makes, I think it ends up stopping short of all that hope offers.
I think it is a grave error to translate spiritual hope into something that removes us from an honest assessment of and down-to-earth involvement in the realities in “things don’t look so good right now.” At the same time, I cannot separate the practical, relational expression of hope from spiritual hope that is woven through every practical hope expressing action, but also stretches past the outer limits of what we can tangibly do.
It’s hard to talk about and not make it sound split or like these two ways of seeing hope are opposites pulling at each other. I don’t see them that way. I suppose I see it as all hope being spiritual, and very often that hope being played out in amazingly tangible and practical and relational ways. But, in the gaps and places where tangible and practical don’t seem to reach, I believe there is still hope.
To try to say it shorter, now that I finally got those other words out, I don’t think holding out hope beyond the ways that I can make a tangible difference requires giving up to a non-response way of being. I believe one can (and should) live in a highly relational and responsive way of being. And I believe that makes a huge difference. I’m thinking beyond the limits that that difference can make, and still finding hope in God. The danger is to exclude one from the other, I think. Instead of a spectrum with spiritualized hope on one end and practical involvement hope on the other, I think I’m picturing a model of circles. But, ha, ha, if I can barely find the right words to get my thoughts out, I’m still a long way from getting the model drawn on paper
Moments of clarity in the depths of agony…a sense of love, a peace that is indescribable, and deeper understanding of our frail humanity. The strength by which we can help each other endure:)
Thanks for this post. May we always hold fast to the blessed hope that we have in Jesus. May that hope not be a “wishr” by an “expectation” found through an unshaken faith.
gaj