Learning to See: A Complicated Hopefulness
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Last week was an awful week: the Boston Marathon bombing, the West, TX plant explosion, the ricin mailed to government officials, and the countless non-newsworthy depressing things that happen every other week (cancer, divorce, death--you know, all the fun stuff we always have to deal with).
And in the midst of such awfulness, I need hope. I desperately need hope. Everything within me begs to find some sort of hope in the world. But the only hope I can stomach is an honest hope, a hope that doesn't ignore all that happened. If hope is just us closing our eyes and telling ourselves everything will magically work out, I don't want to hope. I refuse to accept a meaningless, fluffy hopefulness that ignores the harsh realities of the world. This kind of wishful thinking is not hope and does not help me. It does not in any way soothe the low, deep, persistent aching in my chest that cries out for hope.
In fact, hearing people spout this false hope pains me. It angers me, and I wish it would stop. Especially from Christians. So here it goes:
Please stop believing in "God's promises," and please stop telling others that all they need to do is believe in "God's promises."
No one has any idea what believing in "God's promises" means. It just sounds like non-offensive positivity. It sounds the same as (and tends to come from the same people as those who encourage others that) "Everything will work out for the best in the end."
If you ask people (average Americans, even average Christians) what exactly God's promises are, they have no idea. Maybe God's promises have to do with some vague sense that He's in control and is good and trustworthy and everything will be ok. Or maybe God's promises have something to do with God blessing people who are obedient. Or maybe God's promises have something to do with being a good person or an American or a certain race or a Texan or a supporter of the current political nation of Israel. Or maybe God's promises have something to do with a Bible verse that's been ripped out of context and made to mean something God never intended it to mean. (Like Jeremiah 29:11 where God says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." When we quote this we conveniently leave out the fact that God had just said one verse earlier that the exile and slavery that His people were in was going to persist another seventy years--so the original recipients of this promise were going to suffer for another 70 years in oppression and then die before God did anything about it. God had plans for them, but His plans included waiting till essentially all of that generation was all dead and buried. If we're going to quote this verse to people, maybe we should first explain the context and what the promise really was. )
But with such variation in what we might mean by believing in "God's promises," if you're going to tell people to believe in them, please define what you mean. Which of God's promises? What exactly does God promise? Otherwise, the only thing you're really telling people is that everything will work out in the end, and that sounds like a ridiculous lie.
Everything will work out? How'd it work out for the 8 year old at the Boston Marathon last week?
Over the past few weeks we've had several posts about learning to see that God is at work in the world, about learning to see the glimpses of light bursting forth in an often gloomy world. But what we cannot mean when we encourage people to see God at work and to find hope in Jesus is that "everything will be ok" in any sense of the phrase that we might naturally understand.
The way that most of us naturally understand that phrase is demonstrably false. Everything will not be ok. We all end up lifeless and in a wooden box surrounded by people bawling their eyes out, usually after we've spent a period of months or years in degrading and worsening conditions that have seen us lose our minds, our memories, our strength, and control of our bodily functions. So in a very real sense, everything will not be ok. And it will not be ok for all of us. Things may get better for a while, but we all know how this is going to end.
Everything will be ok, but that doesn't mean that everything will be ok.
Of course, with all that is depressing going on around us and awaiting us, I still contend (regularly and even for a living) that there is hope. I still contend that everything will be ok. But everything will not be ok for me until Jesus, the God-man, returns to transform this world that He created in the first place and to resurrect all those of us who are dead and buried. That is my only hope.
And even that doesn't sound like hope to many around me. Because when Jesus shows up, it doesn't go well for everyone. Everything will be ok, but not for everyone. So please stop saying otherwise.
We will keep writing about learning to see God in the world and about learning to hope, but please know that what we mean is a far cry from the painted-smile drivel we so often hear touted as hope.
