On Loss and Hope

My stomach has been turning this month; that tends to happen when you take big, sobering gulps of global realities. It’s easy for cynicism and anger to sit in the pit of your stomach when you hear bad news, especially ongoing bad news.

Consider the turmoil facing Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities at the hands of a brutal terrorist organization named ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Having captured many historically “Christian” cities, ISIS has driven Orthodox and Catholic believers from their homes and places of worship in Mosul, torturing and murdering those who disagree with their ideology.

Consider the ongoing unrest between Israel and Palestine and the many civilians on both sides who have been killed by blasts or gunfire, or who have been maimed and severely injured.

Consider the ongoing threat of the West African Ebola virus, which has claimed nearly 1,000 lives. The World Health Organization has encouraged every nation to do what they can to help contain and prevent the spread of the lethal disease.

On the domestic front, consider the unjust deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Missouri, two unarmed African American victims of police brutality. Consider the peaceful (and at times, unfortunately, not peaceful) protests of residents in Ferguson, Missouri, and the police department’s heavy-handed, gun touting, tear-gassing response.

Consider the overwhelming devastation expressed on social media and cable news regarding Robin Williams’ suicide. I suppose that, for many, his sudden and sad death felt like losing a lighthearted uncle, making the bewildering event even more upsetting.

If the news above hasn’t made your heart a little heavy, I’m not sure what will. I’m not even sure that many of us are able to have much direct influence on the outcomes of any of those events. From the outside, it’s easy to be jaded and discouraged.

But in the face of death and loss, how do we maintain hope beyond any reasonable expectation to be hopeful?

We should begin by asking: what is ‘hope?’ Is hope just a feeling detached from any concrete realities; a way to comfort others or ourselves with trite verbal encouragements we think are helpful? I don’t think so. Perhaps hope is the will to believe life has the capacity to surprise us with “good” just as readily as it will surprise us with “bad.” But that, too, while on the right track, might be simplistic. Certainly hope seems to be found in the willpower to fight for change, like law enforcement reform in Missouri and New York, or political activism and the pursuit of peace and justice in the Middle East. But I’m skeptical of defining hope as ‘fighting for change.’

Hope defined that way is dependent on results or circumstances. What happens if the agenda gets scrapped and no progress is made? What happens if the organization shuts down? How hopeful is the outlook? And to victims numbed by tragedy, the call to action may feel more like an impossible and crippling demand than a pathway to redemption. Rather than political or social action being the hope itself, I think hope is the impetus that spurs action.

Hope is the motivational resource that compels you to believe something about the future and act accordingly. For example, the vision of a more peaceful Middle East and the vision of a more civil police force are motivational resources for belief and action – they’re hopes. Yet, even as I write this, I feel that I’ve not given a full sketch of ‘hope,’ at least not the nuance of Christian hope.

It’s hard for me to conceive of genuine hope in any meaningful way without including God. Apart from God, I can’t help but see the act of ‘hoping’ as the inward conjuring of an arbitrary desire for things to be better than they are. And that doesn’t seem very helpful. We need a reason to hope.

If hope is going to be anything more than my arbitrary desire for things to be better in an allegedly random, impersonal universe, I have to believe, not only in a ‘hope beyond the walls of the world’ (to pull from a Timothy Keller lecture), but also in a hope that broke in through the walls of the world.

Christian hope is centered, not on a god who stands far off, distantly and indifferently observing the chaos of sin and evil, but on a God who himself entered the chaos of sin and evil to reverse it and begin the healing that he promised. Christian hope rests on a God who, in Jesus, became intimately acquainted with betrayal, loss, abandonment, and pain. Christian hope has the prophet Isaiah’s “suffering servant” of chapter 53 in the heart of what it means to hope. It is precisely through the event of the cross, the ugly, bleak mess of the cross, that God says to humanity, “You are not alone.” Christian hope says, “What I am experiencing is unspeakable, and I’m so lost; but I don’t suffer alone, because Emmanuel, ‘God-with-us,’ empathizes deeply with me.”

The letter to the Hebrews names Jesus as an advocate for us who is able to sympathize with our weakness. The Acts of the Apostles records Jesus standing faithfully by Paul during his lonely imprisonment. The gospel of John recounts Jesus telling his followers, “Take heart, for I have overcome the world.” Christian hope affirms the presence of a God who refuses to stand safely away; a God who insists on getting his hands scraped up and dirty for our sake.

But is that the end of Christian hope? Is Christian hope only for those who feel helplessly numb and emotionally crippled? What transcendent hope is there to counter the burning, vengeful anger elicited by injustice and the confusion of death? The Christian gospel attests to the victory of Jesus over death and injustice at the empty tomb. Jesus raised is God saying, “Death does not have the final word; evil hasn’t won. I’m reversing all that is incongruous to Life.” If you have a God who says that at the center of your reasons to hope, you have everything you need to believe that there is good in store for the world.

It’s a fight to believe any of this in the direst of circumstances, and I’m not saying we have it easy – far from it. But at the very least, while war continues, disease strikes, and the innocent suffer – all for reasons unbeknownst to us – we, like Abraham, can hold out for the promise of God’s restorative action begun in history at the cross and empty tomb. The God who suffered in the flesh with us is the God through whom we can have hope for a glorious future.