Hopelessness for Dummies
“Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him.” Job 13:15 NASB
Hope – America’s presidential election day is just four days away. For a great number of people, this day underscores hopelessness about the world. Everywhere we look, things are worse. The newspapers declare another scandal, the weather is in turmoil, the economy darkens, war and terrorism continue, the poor get poorer. It seems as if the earth itself is running out of gas. No wonder there are so many believers who turn their eyes toward heaven and pray for the return of the Messiah in order to escape all this foreboding disaster.
Does the Bible offer any hope for us? Let’s take a minute to examine the rules of hopelessness and see.
Hopelessness fundamentally depends on a sensory epistemology. What I mean is that I must believe in WYSIWYG thinking (What You See Is What You Get). I must believe that what my five senses communicate to me is all that there is. If there is another realm that I can’t observe, then my sense of observable hopelessness might not be the whole picture—and that gives me hope. But if this is all that there is, then I can conclude from my observation that things are tragically askew and appear to be getting worse. Hopelessness prevails.
Secondly, in order for hopelessness to exist, I must believe that my decisions really don’t make any difference. Yes, of course, they change things for me. I can see their effects in my little world. But over the long run or when it comes to the big things, what does my tiny little choice really do. Nothing! I (mistakenly) think, “Why vote? My vote really doesn’t matter. The power brokers have it all rigged anyway.” I can’t fix any of the really big problems. They have a momentum of their own, impervious to individual pedestrian choices. In fact, I often observe that even my little choice are without impact in my own world. God (if He exists) might be in charge of it all, but I certainly am not—and it looks like God really doesn’t care that much. It’s hopeless. Why try to convince myself that I can make a difference when everything I observe (there is that first idea again) tells me I don’t?
Next, hopelessness means that I really have only three options. I can accept the futility of living and just do my best to not get involved. In other words, I can take the passive approach. As long as I can avoid conflict, stay under the radar, maintain my own little world and not get caught up in “hopeless” causes, at least I can make it through to the end. On my tombstone you can write, “It’s finally over.”
The second option is escape. Here I have a wide variety of possibilities. I can just leave all this hopeless confusion and find the best place of refuge available today. Or I can opt for one of the religious answers, that somehow all of this will be changed for the good in the end, probably after I die. Bertrand Russell called this the religious crutch that less logically rational people employ to get them through life. Most major religions offer some version of this escape mentality, but it can also be used here in this world. This choice really means that I must accumulate enough stuff so you can leave everyone else behind.
The last option is to simply decide to take advantage of this. If it really is hopeless, then I might as well get as much as I can while I am living. If others are stupid enough to not see that it really doesn’t matter, that’s their problem. I decide to live it up as much as I can while I can, preferably with other people’s money. If the world is truly hopeless, then ethics are nothing more than social convention needed to keep the masses in line. But I see the truth. It really doesn’t matter! There are no ultimate winners and losers. There are only those who get it while they can, and those who are the hapless victims of thinking otherwise.
But . . . .
Then there’s Heschel. “I choose to be an optimist in spite of my better judgment.”
Why? Because the biblical world forbids hopelessness. Because the biblical God really is in control and really does have purposes for the good. Because life is more than what I can reach for here. Because what I see is NOT all that there is. Because I have experienced something that is not precisely definable in terms of my senses. Because I want to live, not just survive. Because meaning, ultimate meaning, really matters and I am not a robot or an animal.
Maybe I can make a good, logical argument for hopelessness. But where does that leave me? Nowhere! Empty! Maybe I can’t make a thoroughly convincing argument for hope, but maybe hope isn’t one of the thoroughly logical categories. Maybe it is necessary for life but actually beyond life.
Maybe hope in a present but unseen God is the only real reason for living.
If we address the three rules of hopelessness outlined above, we see that the Bible counters each one. First, it declares throughout that how we know is not limited to our five senses. There are things to be known that depend on other means. Faith is one of these things. Secondly, the Bible emphasizes that observable reality is not defined by my five senses. There are things happening in other realms that I cannot observe now. This world is not the only world. And finally, escape is not really an option. The Bible is pretty clear that human beings were intended for this world and the restored world that is coming. Even when we die we do not get out. Something much greater than us is happening, and we are going to be part of it no matter what we think. In the end, biblical hope can be found in only one way—in the character of YHVH.
Perhaps God’s middle name is tikvah (hope).
Topical Index: hope, hopelessness, Job 13:15
I wonder how anything other than optimism or lack of hopelessness is a Biblical outlook on life. From my handful of laps around the sun I’m that people are older and wiser than me but my perception on optimism has changed over the years as I’ve matured. Optimism isn’t necessarily seeing the glass half full, it’s having gratitude for what you do have even if it’s not what you wanted. If there are bad times, it’s a choice to find the good in the situation and recognize that in the midst of a struggle. But it reminds me of the whole Joseph story.
When Joseph was taken and put on the back of a camel after the whole brothers faking death incident it says, on the back of the Ishmaelites traders camels they had, “aromatic gum and balm and myrrh”. Rashi states the reason why this is included is because all of these things smell great. So the ride into Egypt didn’t smell horrible (like a camel) but rather smelled pleasant-ish. Why? Because God was essentially saying by actions, “Even though i may not be able to answer your prayers for being rescued because there is a bigger picture going on, I can at least do this for you even though you might have not prayed for it”.
In life’s hard situations I believe that we need to find the, “aromatic gun, and balm and myrrh” and have gratitude for it when we see/feel/smell/hear it. The struggle for optimism or lack of hopelessness isn’t much more than being having the discipline and the character to be happy/show gratitude even when the situation isn’t what you would have chose if you were playing God. I think it starts with the gratitude, and if you don’t have that in the situation then you will inevitably not see anything other than what you don’t have ie the garden with Adam and Chava all over again(Being fixated on the one thing you can’t have and only seeing that) or the book of Ester (Wanting Mordecai to show ‘respect’), or Abraham and Sarah (wanting a child “NOW”) or pretty much the point that is trying to be proven again and again and again through out the Bible. Trust and gratitude go hand in hand.
Derek,
Wow, this is excellent! Especially appreciate the “bearing spices, balm and myrrh”! Insightful!
I so enjoy essential oils, they bring healing through aromatherapy.
And, gratitude reveals humility. Thank you for this. Shalom and blessings!
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” What does this mean?!
Skip did a great job of outlining why there is no basis for hope to be found in the world that is. I think this is because the world of the senses is fixed in the past. Don’t believe me? By the time you process what you see, smell, hear, taste and touch, you are running a split second behind reality; behind the true present. If I am going to depend only upon what my senses can deliver to make a decision, I have limited myself to making decisions about only what has already happened. In the wild, where survival depends on avoiding the potential death that lurks in the present, I would be already dead.
If I am limited to making decisions about only what already IS, I am helpless; I am running one step behind. The Bible calls this “dead works”. These are choices and actions that are not life-giving because they are not based upon the present, which is the only place life can be found. All sin is precisely of this nature; reactionary. For example, all fear-based reactions are based in the past (or my negative reactions to what I believe is the future) and therefore are effectively keeping me out of the present. If I am acting out of fear instead of out of love, I am not living in the only place life can be found. I am basically a zombie! By this criteria most people on this planet right now, that Good Book tells me, are not actually alive. We are dead, it tells us: dead in trespasses and sins, and doing the “works of death” which is any choice that keeps us out of the present. Um, that would be all sin. Only grace is keeping sinners alive in these places. Some sinners I know I have suspected are running on pure grace!
Instincts prime nature to preempt death by setting survival techniques to avoid that death. Humans, it has been lamented often, notoriously lack this instinct. We need something else to be able to meet reality head on so as to stay in the present. What we need is faith, hope and love. Faith, hope and love are the correct primes for the human pump of life. Problem: we are not born with them! How do we get them?
Torah outlines what is needed for us to meet grace and begin to take back our responsibility for life. A righteous person is a person who is participating fully in the life to be found in the present. All actions outlined in the Torah are based upon faith, hope and love. We are told that these virtues are gifts bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit. We do not have a basis to manufacture them, in our sensory-limited existence. Life requires the cooperation of heaven. As our breath comes from beyond us, so do the mechanisms to sustain that breath.
How do I get these gifts? In my life, I found that the Spirit bestows freely in all places He is not being resisted. The pair in the Garden before the fall offered no resistance. We do. I must repent for all those places where I thought survival was ‘up to me’, and trade in those dead works at the trading post heaven provided for me (the cross) before I again offer no resistance to that Life. Repentance provides the way to open my hand to the gifts. I must repent for employing fear, despair, pride, bitterness, envy, unloving, occultic thinking, and all the times I made or believed a lie. Every time I see these dead works and repent, I give the Spirit room. He knows what to do from there.
Cliff notes to above: left to ourselves, we are dead people running on sheer grace. To be able to live in the present we need an ability from beyond ourselves. We need the gifts and cooperation of heaven, including the gift of hope. We open our hand to that gift by repenting for hopelessness. Hope and faith are what we have to have to be able to love, which is the action of the Torah. All righteous people are people who are cooperating fully with the basis for life offered to us from heaven (faith and hope) to be able to live the life we were created to live.
☺ “Israel exists not in order to be but in order to dream the dream of God. We are God’s stake in human history.We are the dawn and the dusk, the challenge and the test. The task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. We may falter and fade away, but our sacred tears are like dew that falls on a soil that no treason can desecrate” Heschel
oohh!!! I’ve never heard this Heschel quote…good stuff!!
One can never get enough Heschel!
That’s beautiful! He has such a way with words. If that’s why Israel exists, where do the rest of us fit in? Are we part of Israel? Or are we other?
Amanda, we are the adopted. I see Israel as the sole depository of the Torah: the Law. Israel holds that Law for the rest of us, and no one else gets to write (or rewrite) the Law. We join Israel when we obey that Law “in spite of peril and contempt”. May my tears also fall on a soil that I have not desecrated by treason to that Law! So help me, YHVH.
Thanks Laurita! When I finally began to understand more of Torah, this is one area I’ve really struggled with. It’s always been a challenge to truly yada, know that Gd loves me (to truly believe it and live in it). So, grasping how I fit into His people is challenging because I struggle to not feel like an outsider. I wonder how many of His promises apply to me and my family, and how many of them are just for Israel. Perhaps that’s just part of this journey. 🙂
Dear Amanda,
I have yet to read a promise I felt was not for me. As each promise comes with its own conditions (that would be the “if” part), I have found it possible to claim the promise by meeting the “if”. Not a promise yet have I found I needed, that the “if” was not possible for me to comply with. In fact, I think that compliance IS what makes us “part of Israel”, just as the leprous Naaman complied, and was healed. YHVH bless us all as we claim those promises!
“You are the light of the world.”
Us! You and I.
We need to speak of what we know.
We need to live by the new life we’ve been given.
We need to love others as Jesus loved us.
We need to always give thanks for the light that is Him . . .
shinning out from our redeemed hearts.
“Maybe hope in a present but unseen God is the only real reason for living.”
Exactly.
… “and this hope does not let us down (disappoint us), because God’s love for us has ALREADY been poured out in our hearts through the Ruach HaKodesh who has been given to us.” (Rm 5:5 CJB) The access to hope is God Himself … through His love delivered by His Spirit. What a beautiful and powerful thing – that hope is not dependent on the world around us or its provision … or on emotion and feeling (although it is a joy to feel hopeful), or on me. Hope is completely and eternally from Him, residing in us by God’s divine love that has ALREADY been poured into my heart by His Spirit because of God’s Messiah, Yeshua. This is a fact, stated in scripture as fact. Now we allow ourselves to believe what really is … in Him.
This reminds of a song we sang many years ago based on .
1 John 3 (KJV)
” Behold, what manner of love the Father has given unto us,
that we should be called the sons of God”
Thank you Father for your amazing love to us. It is Your love that gives us hope day by day in world that is upside down seemingly under man’s control but is actually under Your control. Halleluyah.
“Something much greater than us is happening”, and theres an excitement in the air with the coming of the elections. NO, we must never be passive! If we do, we give the enemy the upper hand.
Vote wisely, look at ALL the facts, and, history of the ones whose votes ought to be counted for!! Our prayers for the “right” person to be in the White House! Thank You, ABBA for Your hand upon all the voters, and the Country of US for restoration! Amein!!
Shabbat Shalom!
~ May God, the source of [all] hope, fill you with joy and peace through your faith in Him. Then you will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit ~ (Romans 15.13)