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· Christian hope is not optimism, but unshakeable faith in the future
· In despair, we can have hope
· Hope can transform societies - we need a new politics of hope.
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What is Hope?
As individuals and as a society, we need hope to function healthily and to achieve our full potential. Hope is not mere optimism or wishful thinking. It is rather unshakeable confidence in the future and certain assurance of our destiny. People may put their hope in many different things. It has become something of a cliché to say that ours is a material age in which many find their confidence in the future in their own abilities, their wealth, their career or their relationships. None of these things are wrong in themselves and we are right to take pride in many of them. But in an age increasingly bereft of the spiritual and moral bearings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we would do well to look back over four thousand years of history to see how previous generations faced their predicament and their future with more confidence than our own.
Hope in our Creator has been the foundation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition for thousands of years before the birth of Christ. Look, for example, at the wonderful words of Isaiah (40:31) "....those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint." Jeremiah assures us that those who put their faith in God can face the the future with confidence. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says, "For I know the plans I have for you... plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." If we have the faith to trust in God and walk with him we will be people of hope.
Hope at times of despair
Life is often hard and few of us go through it without moments of trauma and despair. For some these can lead to ongoing depression from which they may never recover. Our response to these moments of crisis can be defining in terms of our outlook and personality. Hope for the despairing is a very precious gift and Christians believe it is freely available to all. There is indeed a sense in which worry for the believer is a type of unconscious blasphemy.
Few people in public life have had as much cause for despair recently as Jonathan Aitken. His fall from grace has been well documented. Although he proclaims himself sceptical of 'foxhole conversions', he was able to write as follows in the Roman Catholic Weekly shortly after he was sentenced:
"On 21st May 1998 I found myself in Chelsea police station where I was charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert public justice. I spent the next five hours alone in a police cell while waiting for the various formalities such as finger printing and photographs. I used the time to read all sixteen chapters of St. Mark's Gospel. This should have been a time of deep despair. The worst day of my life. Not so. For I had such an overwhelming sense of God's presence in the cell with me that I was at peace."
This sense of peace and hope is available to us all, no matter whether we have been the authors of our own misfortune or not. All we need to do is to allow God to come along side us. People whose hope is in God should be joyful. It is a fair criticism of too many Christians that they are not overflowing with the joy and the infectious enthusiasm that the assurance of their faith should bring. We fail to be good advertisements for our faith if this is so. Romans 15:13 urges us to 'overflow with hope' as God fills us with joy and peace by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 12:12 similarly encourages us to "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer".
Hope solves today's problems
Hope is frequently referred to along with faith and love in the New Testament. The sense seems to be that that our faith produces hope, whose outward manifestation is love for our fellow man, which also has a practical expression in terms of good deeds for others.
Hope, or the lack of it can also transform whole societies. In his book, The Politics of Hope, the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks looks back to the last century on both sides of the Atlantic where previous generations wrestled with problems every bit as formidable as our own. The upheavals of the industrial revolution, crime, poverty, unemployment, drunkenness and brutalisation of children seemed to our nineteenth century forebears as intractable as our own today. Of these problems, Sacks writes:
"Their problems were palpably like ours and they were obsessed by them. They debated them, wrote about them, and at times seemed haunted by them. But there was a difference. The Victorians had what we seem to have lost: hope. In the vast array of literature they produced, the absent note is despair... there was none of the anger, denial, relativism... none of the 'not worsening, only changing rhetoric' that so mark and diminish our time."
By the end of the nineteenth century, law-breaking and violence, which had risen steadily until 1850 had fallen. So too had illegitimacy, one of the indicators of the strength of the family institution. The Victorians concentrated on character (which became the title of a famous book by Samuel Smiles, also the author of the better known 'Self-Help'). They expressed concern that actions taken to remedy social problems might in the long run aggravate them by creating dependency and the breakdown of personal and family responsibility. Neither were they individualists in that they had seen how the narrow pursuit of self interest could lead to decadence among the affluent and depravity among the poor.
Mid nineteenth century politicians and thinkers had a firmer grasp than us of that insight which is the source of all hope; we can change the world, because we can change ourselves. In Britain and in America, Thomas Jefferson and others saw education, encouragement and example as the way to change individual behaviour for the better. The concept of duty, particularly for the more fortunate to help the less so, was also widespread and particularly commented on by foreign commentators, like Taine, who were amazed at the mass of voluntary and philanthropic endeavour in Britain at this time.
Although we should not seek a return to Victorian values as our times are different, their experience offers us a model of hope because what has been done once can be done again. A focus on character, on the institutions that promote a strong sense of personhood, and social concern were the key and can be again. Sacks sees this as being achieved more readily through the spontaneous associations of individuals than through government.
The concept of Jubilee, being revisited with the Jubilee 2000 campaign for the relief of unrepayable third world debt (to which the Conservative Party is committed in principle), is one of hope. It is simply a reminder that whatever situation we are in, we can begin again. This applies whether we are talking of a Tanzanian school with only one book, or a council estate in Norwich from which all sense of community has departed. In his book Marxism and Christianity, Alasdair MacIntyre refers to hope as a 'social virtue' and traces its first appearance to the prophets of ancient Israel. The Judaeo-Christian tradition teaches that there is no inevitable future. We are not destined as individuals or as a society to head in any particular direction. The driving force of history is our own free will. By turning away from unwholesome lifestyles we can overcome our predicament. That is the moral basis of hope.
We should be grateful to the Enlightenment for teaching us that religion is not the best way of understanding the natural world around us and that democratically accountable government is preferable to ecclesiastical rule. In other important aspects however, the Enlightenment fails to provide an adequate world view of human nature. By concentrating almost exclusively on individuals and governments and the relationship between the two, the Enlightenment overlooked the social in favour of the political. It failed to recognise the importance of the ties of marriage, family, kin, locality and community.
If we are supported by family, friends, colleagues and neighbours we will be empowered to take risks, to offer committment, to start families, to begin great undertakings and to live by our ideals. Renewing society's resources of moral energy can achieve a new politics of hope.
Related links
Andrew Selous' reasons for getting involved in politics
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