The Beauty of Hope

I've run across a few items recently in which the Christian faith was dismissed as mere wish fulfillment, a fantasy made up to calm insecure hearts. Atheism is strong, they say; it accepts the world for what it is and doesn't try to wrap itself in false hopes. There is a glaring logical fallacy there, which I'll come back to, but first let's consider the beauty of hope.

"Hope" is most commonly used in the Bible in the sense of looking forward to an assured outcome. It's not a foolish wish like, "I hope the Detroit Lions win the next Super Bowl," and not even a saner sentiment like, "I hope she makes it home safe through this rain storm." Romans 5:1-5 is a classic passage:

"Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

I could write about much more than hope there, but I've already covered the beauty of Christ and of virtue, so I'll resist going off on another track. Note how hope "does not disappoint," because the love of God is already present, and by it we can be assured of a good future, even when the present is painful. A Christian's hope is for something not yet seen, yet certain; it is a motivating force that keeps our hearts strong no matter what.

Sometimes when I'm praying I marvel, "God loves me! And that's all I need to know!" Having been a trombone player in the 70s, I can't help flashing back to a snippet of lyrics from one of my favorite horn-based bands, Chicago:

"Because she loves me
And that's all I need to know
She's part of my life
Just a part I won't let go
Then she said
'Love me tomorrow
Won't you please, promise me
Love me tomorrow like today'"

This love is insecure; she is pleading for it to last. God's love is solid and certain. I don't have to plead with him to love me tomorrow like today. This is what hope is like in Christ: it knows it can rest in what is promised.

My dad's pastor was with our family gathered around Mom's deathbed last August. He remarked on the peace in the room. He went on to say it is entirely different when believers in Christ lose a loved one than when non-believers do. I questioned him on that, because I have nowhere near the experience with it that he has: "Is it really that different, Pastor?" He said, "Yes, it really is." Now, I'm sure there are non-believing families that experience loss with some kind of grace, but I'm still inclined to think the pastor was right about the way things commonly are. We were confident of Mom's hope. We were confident of our own. It was a painful, yet also a grace-filled and even holy moment.

Maybe it's not so much that hope itself is beautiful, as that it makes room for a life to be beautiful. Solid hope in Christ removes franticness about time, about things, about having everything seem right, about health. It does not undermine a godly motivation to make things better, but it makes the process more peaceful and light.

As to this being a false foundation for a false faith, that's called the genetic fallacy: thinking that because one has identified some psychological reason for a person's belief, one has falsified that belief. This fails for at least two reasons. One, it can be applied in any direction. An atheist can have a psychological motivation for unbelief. Aldous Huxley said,

"I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption... The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantegous to themselves... For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever." (Ends and Means, pp. 270ff)

So the same argument could be applied toward atheists: they may have psychological motivations for their beliefs, too. Another reason to call it a fallacy is because Christianity's satisfying-ness fulfills a prediction of the faith. It confirms what Christianity affirms: that the faith will meet needs of human hearts.

But I do not want to spend too much time on that; it's a digression. Christianity contains within it a hope that no other belief system has. It has the reality and the hope of grace, of forgiveness, of freedom, as I wrote in the last post in this series. It has the reality and the hope of relationship with a perfectly loving God. It has the reality and the hope of creative fruitfulness. It provides hope for growth in virtue. It has the joy of living among people of hope. It has the hope of eternity.

So we come to the end of this series. There is real beauty in Christianity, founded in the glory and greatness of God. It is not the only reason to believe. There are still the historical evidences and the philosophical lines of argument, and there is the work of the Holy Spirit in Christians' hearts. But the beauty of the faith is certainly satisfying to the heart, to the mind, and to the soul.

Part of a series on Beauty as reason to believe in Jesus Christ:
1. The Beauty of Christ
2. The Beauty of God's Word
3. The Beauty of God's People
4. The Beauty of Virtue
5. The Beauty of Creativity
6. The Beauty of Explanation: The Human Condition
7. The Beauty of Explanation: The Solution
8. The Beauty of Hope

(See the introduction to Part 1, The Beauty of Christ, for the purpose and context of the entire series.)

Posted: Tue - March 27, 2007 at 10:50 PM |

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The Beauty of Hope

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson