Abstract
“I have no hope; but I care.” That's what I heard a visiting scholar say in response to a question after a lecture on the bleak contemporary world situation. I appreciated the frankness of the statement; yet, I was also deeply troubled by it. It is not often that one hears a theologian saying that there simply is no reason for hope. At least, he left the listeners with a call to care for one another while we sink to our miserable deaths aboard the Titanic. That's better than even bleaker alternatives. I’ve been reflecting about what it was about the guest lecturer's counsel of compassionate despair that has haunted my thinking for some weeks after the event.
To be sure, the news these days is not good. The war in Ukraine, the continual appearance of menacing variants of COVID-19, the polarization of political groups in the United States and Europe, the dehumanizing effects of globalized consumer capitalism, rising prices of everything, the prospect of massive and irreversible extinction of myriads of animal species, and the return of the threat of nuclear holocaust all point toward a grim future. Some days, it seems like there may be no future at all for humanity…or for the planet. Rather than a fiery apocalyptic denouement to the world envisioned by first-century Christians, many people today seem to imagine an end to the world that looks more like a smoldering junk heap of wreckage and shrapnel. We are not yet at that point, but it is less difficult today than it used to be to imagine such a nauseating reality. If we extrapolate from several leading indicators, we can readily see that things point in an ominous direction. If projections from current trends into a convergence of doom are how things will likely play out, forthrightness about a lack of hope coupled with an ethic of care would make practical sense.
Yet, I dissent.
I simply don't believe that there is no basis for hope. Our many and interlaced problems in the world today do, in fact, pose a threat to all forms of life on earth. My dissent from the would-be Christian Stoicism of the guest lecturer stems from a different way of thinking both about the future and about hope. First, the future. Anyone who has taken up interest in the study of the future and forecasting what will take likely take place in the decades to come knows that the future rarely, if ever, unfolds simply as an extrapolation from current trends. The future has a disturbing way of developing in non-linear pathways. This, of course, could go either well or badly for us. We could debate about whether the unexpected developments that emerge from the margins of current realities would lead to things getting better or worse. That debate would likely go on without successful resolution, probably generating more heat than light. No matter. We should probably agree that the future unfolds in relation to a complex mixture of current leading indicators and unexpected developments that few, if anyone, can see coming. Recognizing this annoying fact about future-casting should at least put a question mark next to some of our most dire predictions and terrifying fears. Yet, such a recognition does not provide a sufficient basis for hope; it only gives us reason for increased skepticism about future predictions.
I am more interested in thinking about the nature of and basis for hope from my Reformed Christian theological point of view. Biblically speaking, hope does not arise from analyses of current leading indicators. Nor does it come from us and what we choose to do or what we choose not to do. Hope comes to us from God. Hope is a creative act and intervention from God. In this sense, I can agree with the guest lecturer: We, of ourselves, have no reasonable basis for hope. The problem with this view is that God does not simply leave us to our own devices! God shows up. God speaks. God acts. God intervenes. That is the message at the core of the biblical witness. Creation itself came into being as a gratuitous act without extrapolation from precedent conditions. The Exodus occurs as a profound interruption of the leading indicators and predictions. The New Exodus (Luke 9:31) of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ accomplished in Jerusalem makes the point most forcefully and compellingly. As Jonathan A. Linebaugh proclaims in his recent book The Word of the Cross: Reading Paul, “That is the merciful surprise: God gives Christ, incongruously, to the bound, the sinful, and dead; and Christ, impossibly, creates freedom, righteousness, and life.” 1 Linebaugh also writes—to my point about the reason for hope—that, “Nothingness, death, and sin—for Paul, these are the site at which God utters a creative counterstatement: creation, life, righteousness.” 2 Into the midst of doom, death, and utter defeat, God acts in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to change everything. Hope comes from God, not from us. God acts precisely when all is lost and death is all around. Because God exists and because Christ was raised from the dead by the disruptive power of the Holy Spirit, there is always reason to hope. This is why I cannot subscribe to the “I have no hope; but I care” orientation. While that sentiment seems heroically courageous, it really just bears witness to a kind of sad liberal Christian atheism. Instead, there is reason to hope because of divine disruption precisely at the point of doom and despair. God is the gamechanger when it comes to the future.
I have hope; because God cares.