Why hope? How hope?

This is a bleak time to read the news. I’ve been closely following the terrorist assault in Nairobi, Kenya, because I have many friends there (though apparently none were hurt) and I’ve visited the Westgate Mall, where the attacks took place. It’s familiar territory to me, a factor that always makes disaster more real and penetrating.

It’s not just Kenya. After the Navy Yard killings a number of commentators in the U.S. asked whether we are beginning to accept mass murders as the new normal. You could ask the same question about suicide attacks on the international scene. I remember as a child learning about Japanese kamikaze attacks in WWII. The idea seemed bizarre and impossibly inhuman to me then–to deliberately kill yourself as an act of war. Now, it’s a rare week when some suicide bomber somewhere in the world doesn’t slaughter civilians attending a wedding or shopping or riding a bus. What are we coming to? Is the world gone mad?

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Republicans have reached the conclusion that they will go to any length to stop Obamacare. They have attained the mindset, if not the methods, of suicide bombers, wrecking anything to make their point. It may be all bluff, the sound and fury of politics, and I hope it is; but our global experience with ideological extremism makes me queasy. It’s hard to see a good outcome coming from Washington these days.

Which brings me to hope. Why hope? How hope? Can hope be more solid than wishful thinking, more than emotion and pluck?

A famous text addresses that topic. Romans 5:2-5:

“We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

I’m struck that hope is not attained on intellectual grounds. Paul undoubtedly believes and will argue for the future historical realities of the kingdom of God. But he doesn’t say, “We rejoice in hope because the promises of God will come true in a decisive, historical victory for Jesus.” He portrays hope as a moral achievement, not an intellectual one.

I was talking this week to a friend who is struggling in the midst of some very hard times. It came to me that his greatest asset is his experience as a long-distance runner. He knows that you can run while in pain. He knows that not only can you stagger over the finish line, you can actually run a strong and triumphant race. Time and again, both in practice and in competition, he has run while suffering. If you do it enough, perseverance in pain becomes so much an attribute of your personality that you can call it your character. Such characters will not win every race, but they will run every race with hope.

“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love….” Note that Paul does not revert to a historical assertion, that hope will not disappoint because it will all turn out for the best in the end. He stays on the moral and relational plane. We are not disappointed because we experience love.

Love is, of course, closely related to our end in the glory of God. For love and glory go together. Out of all my life the closest to glory I ever came was on my wedding day, watching my bride come down the aisle all smiles. I am sure I gave off measurable luminosity. It is for such glory that hope exists; and it is through such glory that hope does not disappoint.

Hope is not a way around suffering. It comes with suffering. Just as the long-distance runner cannot escape pain, but must fiercely embrace it, so we cannot escape the woes of international terrorism and political dysfunction and mass killings. (Nor, I should add, the woes of our personal lives.) We live in a world filled with woes, and it is only through such woes that we become people of hope. We must keep running with the pain. Sure enough, we will reach the finish line. But it is not the ability to visualize the finish line that grounds our hope. It is the experience of being surrounded by love as we persevere.