Here's Hoping: Recovering Hope for Heaven and Earth

By Stuart McAlpine

'Here's Hoping'. The title is tongue-in-cheek. By saying “here's hoping” we usually fake hope because in reality we are not that hopeful. It is spoken without much confidence or hope at all and betrays uncertainty. We say it as we cast our wants and wishes, without much conviction, into the winds of fortune and the whims of the future, but without any sense of a guarantee for the desired result. “Here's hoping” speaks of longing that is not firing on all cylinders, of a dream or desire that is likely to stay that way, unrealized and unrequited. When we say it, we do not think “cross my heart and hope to die”. That kind of vigorous assurance and commitment is not usually prompting the phrase. It is less about crossing the heart and more about crossing the fingers. It is less about surety and more about good luck. To say “here's hoping” is to prepare oneself for potential disappointment. Ironically, it is more an expression of hopelessness than hope. This book gives the reasons we can say "Here's hoping" with assured anticipation and confidence

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664289994

Stuart McAlpine

Stuart is a graduate of Cambridge University (Literature and Theology) He pastored for forty years and is now the International Director of ASK Network, and a Senior Teaching Fellow at the C.S.Lewis Institute. Other publications include: A Road Best Traveled (Thomas Nelson) The Advent Overture (WestBow Press) Just Asking (WestBow Press) Asking for Pastors (Ask Network) Asking in Jesus' Name (Ask Network)

Book preview

HERE’S

HOPING

recovering hope for heaven and earth

STUART MCALPINE

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Copyright © 2023 Stuart McAlpine.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8997-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8998-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8999-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901060

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/13/2022

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1940

Letters to an American Lady by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1967

The World’s last Night by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1960

God in the Dock: Christian Apologetics by C.S. Lewis

copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1970

God in the Dock: First and Second Things by C.S. Lewis

copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1970

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1942, 1943, 1944, 1952

Miracles by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1947, 1960

Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.1958

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1949

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1985

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1950

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1955

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1So What’s the Hope?

Chapter 2Hope and the Public Square

Chapter 3And the least of these is …

Chapter 4Mind that Hope

Chapter 5The Triune Hope: God of Hope

Chapter 6The Triune Hope: Christ Our Hope

Chapter 7The Triune Hope: The Spirit of Hope

Chapter 8The Anatomy of Hopelessness

Chapter 9The Gospel of Hope

Chapter 10Resurrection Hope

Chapter 11Hope and Resurrection

Chapter 12Hope and Ascension

Chapter 13Hope After Sin

Chapter 14Hope After Betrayal

Chapter 15When Hope is Stumped

Chapter 16His Word is My Hope

Chapter 17My Hope is in Your Word

Chapter 18Hope and Waiting

Chapter 19Hope and Patience

Chapter 20Hope and Discipleship

Chapter 21Hope and Continuing Discipleship

Chapter 22Hope and Community

Chapter 23Hope and the Sacraments

Chapter 24Hope and Healing

Chapter 25Christian Hope for Israel

Chapter 26Our Father in the Hope

Chapter 27The Anchor of Hope

Chapter 28The Blessed Hope

Chapter 29The Blessed Hope: For My Going

Chapter 30The Blessed Hope: For His Coming

Chapter 31Hope for Heaven and Earth

Appendix 1

Endnotes

To my darling wife, Celia, with whom I share my life and living hope.

To all my children and grandchildren, in the hope that

their hope will be nothing less than the hope of glory.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the

Lord … to give you a future and a hope."

(Jeremiah 29:11)

Hope does not put us to shame.

(Romans 5:5)

"From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is

eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and

therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present."

(Jürgen Moltmann)

Hope is passion for what is possible.

(Soren Kierkegaard)

Dum spiro spero - While I breathe, I hope.

(Theocritus)

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

(Martin Luther)

Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.

(Pliny the Elder)

"Hope means hoping when things are

hopeless, or it is no virtue at all."

(G.K.Chesterton)

If it is rational to hope, is it rational to hope without God?

(Alan Mittelman)

So instead of looking for hope, try this: don’t hope.

(Mark Manson)

"Hope is an essential part of the human condition …

the mind and soul cannot endure without hope."

(Elie Wiesel)

Preface

As I began to write this manuscript, coronavirus was going global, and the stock market had crashed into the ground. Future hopes deposited in healthy bodies and investment accounts were taking a beating. Fitness and nutrition, acquisition and ambition were turning out to be bad synonyms for hope. The idolatries of cultural success had fallen, as the venues of sports and entertainment were empty and silent. Meanwhile, as is customary in hopeless times, current Presidential campaigners, here in the United States, had adopted futurist slogans in the tradition of earlier campaigns. Do you remember any of them? Keep hope alive (Jackson 1988); Leadership for the New Millennium (Gore 2000); A safer world and a more hopeful America (Bush 2004); Hope (Obama 2008); Forward (Obama 2012); Restore our Future (Romney 2012). Following what has been aptly described as the hope and change messianism of Obama¹, Donald Trump re-branded President Reagan’s successful rallying cry of 1980: Make America Great Again! Joe Biden was telling us that Our best days still lie ahead and Bernie Sanders was committed to give us A future to believe in. Regardless of their differences, they share a naïve hope-ology. If hope is still just around the corner, then why does that corner feel like a very long, slow turn, that just keeps bending until it appears to be a circular treadmill of hopelessness?

The Hope T-Shirt has been turned inside out and is now reading Anxiety. We have been coined ‘the age of anxiety’. If you think about it, anxiety is the antithesis of hope, since its posture in the face of the future is fear. Social commentators like Ross Douthat have commented on the public’s wavering trust in once respected public institutions as well as its dwindling expectations for personal and private life. There is not so much a demise of hope as a death. There are no present equivalents to the hopes of utopia percolating in Paris, Woodstock, and San Francisco. ²

Or are there? The fact is that the growth of Christian hope is blooming and burgeoning in the massive revival movements of Africa, China and South America. The near-the-floor reading on the West’s hope-meter is in stark contrast to the rocketing hope-scales in the global East and South. Yes, maybe the apostle Paul’s dictum can be heard in the western wind: without hope and without God. However, what Paul immediately went on to say to the Ephesians is a front-page declaration that needs to be re-read and re-heard: BUT NOW! Now what? The hopelessness of separation from God, of being without God and without hope, has been exchanged for the hope of nearness: But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ³

This book is a plate of appetizers, a wide variety of small bites and tastes of this enormous subject of Christian Hope, to show you how it can be served in so many different ways, but also to demonstrate that it is an ingredient that the recipe book, the scriptures no less, suggest is present in everything that we spiritually ingest for our present and eternal nourishment.

I am trusting that you will find this modest treatise:

• Pertinent: relevant and applicable to both present culture and your present life

• Persuasive: a presentation and argumentation from biblical material that seeks to convince you about the future according to God

• Personal: we may find ourselves in very different places on the hope-index for many reasons that will be part of the discussion: whether the reason is theological or psychological, temperamental or intellectual, or whether it has been eroded by disappointment and loss of many kinds.

This matter of hope is so foundational to our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to our daily discipleship, to our capacities to live for Christ. You can read book after book about discipleship but so many of them never deal with the subject of hope, and often, never even mention it. That is an utterly incomplete presentation of the Christian message and ultimately unhelpful, because unhopeful.

In the Old Testament Histories, huge waves of national and international history sweep across the pages of Judges and the Samuels, the Kings and the Chronicles. However, amidst the generalized and globalized hopelessness, tucked in between their leaves is the book of Ruth that tells us that her poignant and painful hopelessness was not lost on heaven’s radar. Hope is earthed in the family of an unknown widow. In the New Testament, tucked amidst all the great epistles with all their doctrinal import and addressing beleaguered believers in the major cities of the world, is the little book of Philemon, intensely personal and pastoral, about one unknown person’s hopelessness and need, the slave Onesimus. Essentially, as a slave he was a no-hoper, given his status in the world’s systems of preferral and referral. But hope intervenes and he ends up an equal dear brother in the community of hope in Colossae. Ruth ends up in Bethlehem, which means ‘the house of bread’. There was hope there for the hungry, and did not Jesus, the living bread, the hope of the world begin His life there? This book is an invitation to come back to a community of hope, to a Bethlehem as it were, to a Colossae … back to where you once started perhaps … back to where the hopelessness exiled you and forced you out of the place of hope’s provision. Like the timing of Ruth’s arrival in Bethlehem, may this book turn out to be the beginning of the barley harvest of hope for you.

Renowned Professor of Divinity, Martin Marty, commented on the eclipse of hope in our culture of prevalent hopelessness. Thus, he asked: Could a revived ‘theology of hope’ restore faith in hopeless times? ⁴ This book seeks to contribute a few decibels to a loud resounding answer to his question. Yes! Regardless of the raucous headlines and news-bytes that subvert our hope and prospects on a daily basis, regardless of the overwhelming need of humanity at this hour, perhaps this book can remind you of your enormous significance to the God of Hope, who, if He can see the sparrow, can certainly see you, and give you a recovered and renewed living hope in a world of darkening hopelessness. As hopeless as the future is for so many, for the Christian it is a blessed hope. Hopefully, this book will encourage you to hope fully and be reminded about why we neither fear nor mourn as those who have no hope. Here’s hoping indeed!

Benediction

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace

as you trust in Him, so that you will overflow with

hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

(Romans 15:13)

"Vain are the hopes the sons of men on

their own works have built."

(Isaac Watts)

"In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said,

Let there be light. And there was light. There was

still nothing, but you could see it a lot better."

(Woody Allen)

"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so

much in despairing of life as in hoping for another."

(Albert Camus)

Hope is a serene, confident expectation of good.

(Derek Prince)

"Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its

arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark.

Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the

fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican

burial service inters the corpse ‘in sure and certain hope of the

Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’"

(Jim Packer)

"To be optimistic is presumptuous. To be pessimistic

is non-theistic. The Christian attitude is hope.

As a theologian, I am leaning into hope."

(Al Mohler)

"What oxygen is for the lungs, hope is for

the meaning of human life."

(Emil Brunner)

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I am a dog. Tomorrow I’ll still

be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement."

(Charles Schultz)

I am prepared for the worst but hope for the best.

(Benjamin Disraeli)

1

So What’s the Hope?

Cross your heart or cross your fingers

Here’s hoping. We have all said it and we all know what we really mean when we do so. Of course, we want a favorable outcome, but truth be told, we are thinking that the odds are not that good, that it is a ‘maybe’, a ‘perhaps’, who knows, but it just might be worth a try. By saying here’s hoping we usually fake hope because we are just not that hopeful. It is spoken without much confident hope at all and betrays uncertainty. The very tone of voice we use is the give-away, laced with diffidence and sometimes rank despondency, often accompanied by the raising of eyebrows, the splaying of the hands and the shrugging of shoulders. (Practice it when no one is looking.) We say it as we cast our wants and wishes, without much conviction, into the winds of fortune and the whims of the future, but without any sense of a guarantee for the desired result. Here’s hoping speaks of longing that is not firing on all cylinders, of a dream or desire that is likely to stay that way, unrealized and unrequited. When we say it, we do not think cross my heart and hope to die. That kind of vigorous assurance and commitment is not usually prompting the phrase. It is less about crossing the heart and more about crossing the fingers. It is less about surety and more about good luck. To say here’s hoping is to prepare oneself for potential disappointment. Ironically, it is more an expression of hopelessness than hope.

Hopefully

If you think about it, this is true of most of the common sayings or phrases that contain the word ‘hope’. You soon realize that they too are not very hopeful at all, like hopefully. Again, we really mean that it is a long shot, and a shot in the dark at that, and you should brace yourself for a let-down. We raise our hopes and we get our hopes up because expectations are actually lowered, and we think we will be saying our hopes were sunk. When we say, I sure hope so, it usually betrays the fact that we are neither very sure, nor do we have much hope. I’m hopeful … I’m hoping against hope … I’m holding out hope … I’m pinning or setting my hopes on … I’m placing all my hope in … I’m building up my hopes … I’m hoping for the best … there’s a glimmer of hope ... hope is a risk that must be run. At least such expressions are stopping short of saying that it is beyond hope, or that there’s not a hope. Even a phrase like young hopefuls carries a note of cynicism, implying that hope is a result of innocence or lack of worldly experience that will soon be recalibrated by reality. The truth is that the verdict seems to be out and a lack of assurance cannot be disguised, though the use of the ‘hope’ word tries to cover it up, putting a brave face on present circumstances and future outcomes.

Where there’s life

It was Cicero in the first century BC who observed: ‘dum anima est, spes esse dicitur’. Of course, we do not say it quite like that! Literally, it means ‘there is said to be hope for a sick man while there is life’, but we reduce it to ‘where there’s life, there’s hope.’ A cynic might respond, Not on your life or perhaps Not in your life. Sometimes, seldom or never? Is there ever a chance of a lifetime? Is it a fighting chance or a fat chance? Is there really any salvageable solace in being down to ‘the last out’? Is there any hope in clutching at straws? How sanguine are we when searching for that glimmer of hope, which by definition is only a faint and wavering light? Is it possible to have a dream … or is it in your dreams? In whose breast, exactly, does hope spring eternal? Is there always light at the end of the tunnel? How helpful is a ray of hope when you need a solar flare? Does every Yiddish pot find its lid? Does every cloud have a silver lining? Does the dawn always come after dark? Is there always a way where there is a will? Is it only a matter of time? If hope is betting on the future, what are the odds? Will tomorrow be better … than this? Is there any comfort at all in being told that the first purpose of hope is to make hopelessness bearable? Some have argued that hope for the future is the very emblem of the grip of time and we cannot be conscious of time without a knowledge of death. When hope will become a dying gasp (Job 11:7) what then? Is it surprising that Douglas Adams, of Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ¹ fame concluded: Hope is tomorrow’s veneer over today’s disappointment? So what happened to Where there’s life there’s hope? Or should we be hoping that where there’s hope there’s life?

Anti-hope

This is why many, like Aristotle, cynically charge hope with deception: Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. It is only because the young have a short past but a long future that they readily hope and fall a prey to unfulfillable longings, misplaced passions and unrealizable idealisms. He did not include hope in his list of virtues. Lord Byron described hope as nothing but the paint on the face of existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off. Hope has been called the universal liar. A more recent author, Mark Manson, has penned two #1 New York Times bestsellers² with his blunt thesis that hope itself is both the cause and effect of hopelessness, arguing that hope is an imagined vision that spawns destructive potential. Because hope is ultimately empty, we should therefore hope for nothing. Our calling is to act without hope … to not hope for better. This explicit rawness of the cultural hopelessness that we are addressing, is raging against the dying of the light and does not believe that the deepening darkness is coming before another dawn.

Woody Allen is one whose morbid cynicism garbs hopelessness with a dark comedic camouflage: Don’t think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses … Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it … It seems to me the only hope for mankind lies in magic. I have always hated reality, but it’s the only place you can get good chicken wings.³ He is a self-confessed spokesperson for those who regard any suggestion of hope as irrational, fanciful, escapist, naïve, sentimental, fraudulent. It fails to deliver. Inevitably, he is chief among the mockers of Christian hope, for all these charges.

What’s not to hope

There are some common views that present themselves as hope but upon inspection are not hope and should not be confused with a Christian understanding of hope. They are marked by either a positivity that creates its own sense of hope, or a passivity that means hope is dependent on factors out of one’s control.

• Optimism: Hope is not just a passing happy wish that something desirable might happen. It is not to be confused with ‘hoptimism’ that believes that everything gets better with a good beer! The French word ‘optimisme’ was in vogue in the 18th century, when it was very much a philosophy that believed, in the words of Leibniz, ⁴ that this was the best of all possible worlds. As harmless as looking on the bright side appears to be, it is rooted in some tenets of irreligious faith: that goodness pervades reality (denying sin and salvation) and that this material world is the only reality (denying a heavenly hope). Although it hoped for the best, optimism had to ignore certain evil realities. Christian hope is utterly realistic and acknowledges that things might, and according to Jesus, will get worse. This is not hope in the possible changeability of circumstance, but in the unchangeable nature of God’s reliability and faithfulness. Optimism has no certainty, because there is no guarantee of the best for which we hope. You can be optimistic without necessarily being hopeful. As the old joke goes, the pessimist says that things cannot get any worse, and the optimist says, ‘O yes they can!’ Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God Himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of this life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God’s own commitment, that the best is yet to come.⁵ Optimism is actually self-centered, wanting things to go one’s way, to be good for oneself. Christian hope is not just realistic, it is righteous and hopes for what is good on God’s terms. Though appearing positive, optimism can end up passive, requiring no action. Clearly, this is not Christian hope, which can still be hopeful where there are no grounds for optimism. Following the assault on faith by the rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment and by the scientism of the 19th century, secular optimism replaced faith. Darwinism gave the idea of moral optimism (moral evolutionism) a ‘scientific’ rubber stamp. This oiled the wheels of secular eschatology, the myth of progress, until they got bogged down in the bloodied mud of Flanders in World War I, and terminated at the buffers in the Nazi extermination camps of World War II. It needs to be said that the holocaust did not just incinerate optimism. In the words of George Steiner: To a degree which numbs understanding, this entire crucible of creation, of hope, now lies in ash.⁶ For so many, it was the death of hope itself, yet head-in-the-sand optimism still found it hard to let go of this myth of progressive self-betterment, despite post-modernity’s verdict on its naiveté, and the increasing power of scientific and technological development to inflict more disruption, disaster and destruction in its fission chambers of generative hopelessness.

• Positive thinking: Again, this is focusing on what is perceived as positive, at the expense of choosing to ignore real and possible threats. Seeing things positively becomes an ironic blindness to reality. Truth is manipulated and will be suppressed if it comes over as too negative. Thus, Christian truths will be edited, like fallenness and sin, guilt and judgment. One’s hopes become self-perceived and consequently self-deceived. Sadly, this-worldly hope smuggles its way into enculturated Christianity that would rather read a book entitled ‘Your Best Life Now’⁷ than the Bible that contradicts this view. This is not Christian hope and not the hope of the gospel. It is a sacralized version of American pragmatism and materialism. The faith in the fact that creates the fact could not be more counter to faith in Christ who makes all things new.

• Wishing: There is a popular poster that reads: ‘Hope is wishing something would happen.’ This is not Christian hope. To wish is not to hope. It is not wrong to express aspirations, anticipations or ambitions, but again, there is no certainty about anything hoped for. Wishing is often as much about the present as the future, about what is perhaps less likely and more improbable, and sometimes carries a lot of emotional angst. The primary emotion of Christian hope is joy. Wishing often develops into superstition as people wish upon a star, or knock on wood, or look at the clock at 11:11. People try to actualize their wishing by visualization techniques, as if our seeing imagination can create the fact. It is easy to see how wishing leads to false hopes and renewed hopelessness. Hope is not wishful reverie. It promotes and produces active engagement and involvement.

• Lady Luck and Karma: Hope is yet again an uncertainty, an outcome that is in the hands of other unknown whimsical and mercurial forces that may or may not be trustworthy. Good fortune is deified, like the gods and godsends. The hope is for good karma. Opposed to Christian hope of a life after ‘life after death’, it propagates the false belief in reincarnation. Hope is limited by what life deals, by what’s in the cards, or in the tea leaves. The rituals and the charms become the liturgies and sacraments of false hope. As with wishing, the door is opened to all kinds of soul-ties and demonic spirits that bind people more tightly to their hopelessness.

• Utopian ideologies: Hope is quite distinct from a utopian myth of progress.⁸ History is littered with humanistic attempts to fulfill idealistic hopes and establish a counterfeit heaven on earth according to preferences, whether political or sexual, social, or spiritual. In 1516, Thomas More wrote Utopia ⁹, his vision of an ideal society. The Greek for ‘good place’ is eutopos but there is a possible ambivalence given that outopos is the Greek for ‘no place’. Nearly 1900 years before him, Plato had written about an ideal city-state, its nature, and its leadership, in his Socratic dialogue The Republic ¹⁰. It is estimated that over one thousand utopian works were produced in the twentieth century, infamous for more deaths by violence and persecution than any other century. In school, some of us had to study novels like We ¹¹ by Zamyatin and 1984 ¹² by Orwell, in which we were introduced to The Benefactor, The Guardians and Big Brother. The rise of dystopian fiction and of apocalyptic visions is no surprise, given the death camps of the Third Reich, the Gulag of the Soviet Union, the killing fields of Cambodia, all driven by utopian pretensions. As one philosopher of that century put it: There is tyranny in the womb of every utopia ¹³. Disturbingly, the utopian spirit refuses to die and is re-morphing itself in our own time. We have short memories. After the utopianism of post-Darwinian moral evolutionism, theological liberalism and secular humanism, even the horrors of the first world war’s carnage did not guarantee a long-lived return to an acknowledgement of original sin and the veracity of a transcendent hope, though some theologians tried. Despite his arguments in The Principle of Hope ¹⁴, Ernst Bloch’s attempts to focus on future dreams rather than Freudian repressions of the past, failed to deal with the rooted dissatisfaction that remained at the core of hope, regardless of the efforts of the imagination and fantasy to move beyond past memories and present anxieties. Hope for a Brave New World ¹⁵ disintegrated into the hopelessness of the fearful old world. Only Jesus’ kingdom of heaven on earth, in its realism and radicality, righteousness and renewal, is the true hope for heaven and earth.

False hopes

Hope is objective but it is also subjective. It has an object but it engenders emotions and affections. We hope in something or someone. If it is a false object then it will be accompanied by deceptive feelings and ungodly behaviors. The Bible is littered with warnings about false hopes that are no hope at all, but just disguises for hopelessness. They are described as the hope of the godless that perishes. Ultimately, they will all fail the one who hopes. What he trusts in is fragile; what he relies on is a spider’s web. He leans on his web but it gives way; he clings to it but it does not hold (Job 8:13-15). Such is the illusory and temporal nature of false hopes. They will come to nothing (Proverbs 10:28). The enumeration of these false hopes would be a book in its own right, or at least a chapter, but here are some clues about some of them for the sake of a paragraph.

If only God is our only hope, then any hope that displaces or replaces Him is going to be false by definition and deceptively work against true creational fulfillment and joy. False hopes always draw someone away from faith into faithlessness. The false promises of false hope defy the promises of God for life now and forever. We can categorize some of these:

• False hopes in people: A few verses before Jeremiah describes God as the hope of Israel he identifies the false hope placed in men: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength (17:5, 13). Hopes placed in mortals die with them; all the promise of their power dies with them (Proverbs 11:7). Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots … they are mere mortals and not God … flesh and not spirit (Isaiah 31:1-3).

• False hopes in provision: Command those who are rich … not to put their hope in wealth … but to put their hope in God (1 Timothy 6:17). Job curses himself if I have put my hope in gold … I would have been unfaithful to God (Job 31:24).

• False hopes in political leaders: Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save. This is followed by: Blessed is he … whose hope is in the Lord his God (Psalm 146:3,5).

• False hopes in political allies: Those who hoped in Ethiopia and boasted in Egypt will be dismayed and put to shame (Isaiah 20:5).

• False hopes in military power: No king is saved by the size of his army … A horse is a vain hope for deliverance … the eyes of the Lord are on those … whose hope is in His unfailing love (Psalm 33:17).

• False hopes in religion: The people of Judah are warned not to have a false hope and trust in deceptive words about the Temple as the religious institution (Jeremiah 7:4). The religion of the prophets was filling them with false hopes (Jeremiah 23:16). The God of hope declares His active opposition against those who give false dreams (v32), who prophesy peace and prosperity when there is going to be neither (Ezekiel 13:10).

• False hopes in idols: Those who cling to worthless idols will forfeit their hope (Jonah 2:8). Those who make idols will be like them and so will all who hope in them (Psalm 115:8). These idolatries are physical and spiritual, emotional and intellectual, as in our false ideologies.

• False hopes in false gods: How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? (Psalm 4:2) The psalmist compares those who hope in the Lord with those who turn aside to false gods (Psalm 40:4) as represented by the pantheon of occultisms and demons, of myth and mystery; by the deities of false religion, and the sacralization of nature in pantheism.

• False hopes in self: To those whose hope was in themselves, the prophet says: Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself ‘I am and there is none besides me’ (Isaiah 47:10). The false hopes of hypocrites and of the wicked will perish (Job 27:8; Proverbs 10:28).

• False hopes in falsehood: When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place (Isaiah 28:15).

The God of hope expressed grief through the prophet Isaiah at the determination with which people persisted in masquerading their hopelessness with the cosmetics of false hopes: idols … pagan symbols … beds you love … perfumes … ambassadors. It was a perseverance in false hope that insisted that all was well and refused to concede and confess the true state of hopelessness. "You wearied yourself by such going about, but you would not say, ‘It is hopeless.’ You found renewal of your strength and so you did not faint" (Isaiah 57:10). They battled on, living off the fumes of falsehood. The first step to recovering true hope is to admit the reality of the hopelessness, and the futility of false hopes. It is hopeless.

The problem of hope

In summary, you do not have to think about hope for too long to come to some uneasy conclusions.

• Hope is misunderstood: Many people do not understand what the word means and therefore what hope actually is. They confuse it as a synonym for wishes or wants, desires or dreams, with a flush of happy optimism thrown in, accompanied by the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra’s song about "high apple pie in the sky hopes." ¹⁶ It is more about something fanciful or even fantastical than factual. It breeds implausible and improbable expectations based on a faulty view of reality.

• Hope is neglected: When we begin to think about hope it is surprising how few resources there are that encourage our line of inquiry. Books about love and faith far outnumber those about hope, and there are some understandable, though not excusable, reasons for why the subject of hope gets overlooked or deliberately ignored, side-stepped or silenced. Clear teaching about it is a major omission in most treatments of Christian discipleship, and consequently, many weaknesses and fault-lines remain in personal Christian life in relation to our past, our present and our future. We can explore these reasons together. Hope is arguably the most unsung, unheralded, yet most necessary of all Christian habits of mind and Christian virtues. One pastoral commentator put it like this: Hope is one of the most neglected virtues in the whole of our Christian calendar … In my lifetime I have heard hundreds of sermons on love, hundreds of sermons on faith, but only two preached on hope – and I preached both! What has happened to hope?¹⁷

• Hope is lost: Indeed, where did hope go? It is perhaps not just about hope neglected but about hope lost. People lose hope for so many reasons in personal and spiritual life. I have no future … it’s too late … it will never get better … it can’t change … I’ll never be … there’s no hope. There are so many ways that hope gets withered, worn down, washed up. This loss is one of the greatest contributors to disappointment, despondency, depression and despair. It significantly affects our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. How much hope is buried in a cosmic ‘Lost and Found’? Between apoplectic despair for the present and apocalyptic desolation for the future, hope eternal is eternally lost.

• Hope is abandoned: Many whose hopes have been dashed, choose to respond by altogether abandoning their hope for the future, and consequently they lose their faith for the present as well. Though they rationalize this, often by blaming God for being AWOL, they are deceptively unaware that they have chosen to initiate the abandonment and rejection of the God of hope, and the hope of heaven. Dante’s warning over the gate of hell absolutizes this awful choice: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. ¹⁸

• Hope is mocked: The ridicule of the unbelieving world of the hope of the Christian is relentless, as a presumptive rationalism rails against the most central truths of Christian hope, not least of which are the Resurrection, the return of Christ and the fact of judgment. After a while, hope is eroded, whether by a direct and contemptuous onslaught, or by an arrogant derision of the faith once delivered. This mockery is a disdainful disregard for God’s Word of hope.

• Hope is falsified: False hopes abound, and no-one spoke more strongly against these than Jesus Himself, particularly in His confrontation with the Pharisees, and in the pronouncement of His many Woe’s, each of which focuses on something that people make a false source of trust or hope. With every Woe! He was denouncing a false hope: of worldliness (Matthew 18:7), of self (Matthew 23:13), of riches (Luke 6:24), of reputation ((Luke 6:26), of the next generation (Matthew 24:19), of any hope in one’s own appearance, ability or achievement. The outcome of false hope is a deeper and darker hopelessness.

• Hope is opposed: The more you examine the biblical understanding of hope, the more you understand why such hope is so aggressively and dismissively opposed by a rationalist, secularist or hedonistic mind-set. The future hope as it is described by the Bible is not everyone’s desire or delight, least of all the devil’s, who seeks to place any blockage between us and our hope, anything that obscures our line of sight to heaven. The opposition has not just been intellectual but physical, as thousands have been martyred for their hope. We forget that the reason Paul gave his accusers for his arrest that would lead to his martyrdom in Rome was simply because of my hope in what God has promised … because of the hope of Israel (Acts 26:6, 28:20).

Without biblical hope we have no confidence for either present or future, and certainly no boldness for present witness to God’s world. So whether hope is misunderstood, whether it is languishing through neglect, whether it is plain lost, or maybe deliberately jettisoned and abandoned, whether it is being seriously opposed in our lives right now, or whether we have succumbed to false hopes, we are hereby invited to a renewed expectation in God, the God of Hope, and to a recovered hope in what He has prepared for our future.

So why the title?

Why? Because this book is about rescuing the true meaning of Christian hope, and infusing it back into the vernacular phrases, so that when we say them, we are making a confident proclamation about a sure, proven and good anticipated future outcome. Here’s hoping will declare an assurance about a secured future. Hopefully will shed the question mark of doubt for the exclamation mark of confident expectation and anticipation of our future according to God. Hopefully need not be said with a lowered head but with a raised voice that proclaims it, as if raising a glass as a celebratory toast to all that God has promised and prepared for those who love Him. It is all about how God transforms hope frustrated into hope fulfilled. It is about recovering a biblical hope that gives assurance in the present and confidence for the future. In the words of Peter, "Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:13). Hope is an important subject, and a huge one, which makes this a necessary discussion. The title deliberately intends to tease out the ambiguities in the way we refer to hope, as well as the wrong meanings we give to it, while seeking to recover its true biblical meaning in a context of present and prevailing hopelessness.

This is not a subject for the faint-hearted. It does not encourage a low-key ‘thought for the day’ approach. It does not lie down and behave itself or fit into an easily applied template. It does not come in a cute promise-box format, even though hope is fundamentally about the promises of God. It will require a commitment. It will be challenging, demanding, but very encouraging and stimulating, and if the truths about biblical hope are received and believed, we will be set free from all manner of bondage and brokenness, fear and frailty, in every context that we discuss it. That is how hopeful I am concerning the power of biblical hope. If we can apply ourselves to the study of this subject with a view to our present personal transformation, and to our future eternal destination, can we manage to read at least one more chapter … the next one? Here’s hoping! Hopefully? No, hope fully!

The status of the future of the verb is at the very core of existence.

(George Steiner)

There is such a thing as an ecology of hope. There are environments in which it flourishes and others in which it dies.

(Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)

For all of our hope in cultural progression, in the deepest recesses of our souls, we sense that this is an illusion.

(Dr. Curt Thompson)

To live without hope is to cease to live.

(Fyodor Dostoevsky)

What can I know? What can I do? What can I hope?

(Immanuel Kant)

Hope is the fabric out of which our soul is made.

(Gabriel Marcel)

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.

(Alfred Nobel)

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

(Benjamin Franklin)

Hope is a waking dream.

(Aristotle)

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.

(Jim Wallis)

2

Hope and the Public Square

Is hope rising?

Even if hope is not rising, the twentieth century saw the rise of intense interest, especially philosophical curiosity, in hope. Philosophers like Ernst Bloch and Gabriel Marcel led the way. They could not avoid observing that hope seemed to be organic to the very nature of matter, of humanity and of the cosmos at large. Of course, this had nothing to do with a necessary belief in God or in the future according to God, but was seen as an intrinsic part of evolutionary function. Hope, the ‘middle child’ of the three great Christian virtues, has emerged as the central player, not only as the virtue of continuing philosophical pursuit, but also of most interest in the worlds of medicine, psychology, psychotherapy and social science, not to mention neurology. ‘Hope Theory’ ¹ is now its own field of study. The role of hope in the maintenance of emotional, mental, social, and physical health has attracted unprecedented attention from all practitioners in these areas of care.

Every investigative study about hope, regardless of the discipline, has concluded that it is the single best predictor of well-being. Hope has surpassed economics as an indicator of quality of life. Research has documented the correlation between work absenteeism and low productivity, and the personal sense of hopelessness. It is interesting to note how religious language smuggles its way into the analyses that conclude that we emotionalize our ideas by the power of love, faith and hope. The re-arrangement of the Pauline order is probably to have the emphasis fall on the last of these (not the least of these) – hope. Not surprisingly, HOPE is the name of choice for so many recovery institutions like ‘Camp HOPE America’ that reaches children traumatized by domestic violence, or like the ‘HOPE Lodges’ that support cancer patients. Perhaps one day, given the increasing agreement on the irreplaceable role of hope in human happiness and endeavor, HR will come to stand for Hope Resource instead of the more general Human Resource. Of course, it has always been a name of choice for churches: Hope Fellowship, Hope Community, Hope Church, Good Hope Church, Living Hope, Blessed Hope, One Hope, Abiding Hope, City of Hope - there is always room for one more New Hope congregation. The message is clear: hope seems to matter.

An open door for hope

The point is that any discussion of specifically Christian hope, as represented by a book like this, is taking place in a public square that is intently and intensely pursuant of hope’s nature, defining it and continually refining it in a way that makes it distinct from the optimism and wishful thinking described by one psychologist as mental fast food. The questions of research papers are common. Hope is described by Emily Dickinson as the thing with feathers. ² But is it airy fairy, vague and vacuous? How do you put flesh on the bird? What is it? How do you acquire it? Can you teach it? How do you harness it? How do you measure it? The acknowledgement of a major cultural ‘hope deficit’ has resulted in ‘hope indices’ and ‘hopelessness scales’. The rediscovery of hope as a factor in physical health and pain-bearing has raised the question as to why doctors do not ask their patients about their hopes before taking out their stethoscopes. The common questions have led to some shared core conclusions among health providers. Hope requires choices and acts of will that believe the future can be better. Humans need to have something to be excited about in their future. Hope improves life. Hopes are sustainable whereas optimism is not. Hope is integral to all forms of healing.

From a Christian perspective, since hope is fundamental to our understanding of the gospel, this is encouraging, in that the public therapeutic focus on hope might generate a renewed interest in what the Bible has to say about it. This gives a welcome bridge into every ‘care community’ and an open door to anyone who is concerned about their future and their quality of life. It gives another opportunity to give specifically Christian reasons for our hope, that while supportive of the conclusion that we were made to hope, are very different in the explanations about hope’s grounds and goals. For example, a repeated formula for the ‘science of hope’ is that hope requires the committed thinking and work of the agent in relation to two things: first a goal and then a path to get there. This is essentially a take on the saying, ‘where there’s a will there’s a way.’ Hope has been described like this: the sum of mental will-power and the way-power that you have for your goals ³ This makes hope self-produced and self-perpetuated, suggesting that we have control over hope. It is all about human desires and directives, human capacities and capabilities. It is devoid of a divine referent and can be read as functionally atheist.⁴ This explains the book-title of one of the popular renditions of hope theory, ‘Making Hope Happen’ ⁵ by a leading voice in the ‘psychology of hope’ school. The kids who are served at Camp Hope America are taught these lines of Dr. Seuss: You have brains in your head. You have feet on your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. ⁶ The encouragement of motivation is not questioned but compared to biblical hope, these hoping mechanisms are more disciplined forms of self-derived optimism, serving mainly one’s own satisfying means and satisfied ends.

Pandora’s box

Inevitably, discussion about hope, whether medical or philosophical, invokes the myth of Pandora (all-gifted). Her jar, crammed with every kind of evil donated by the gods, was Zeus’ punishment for Prometheus’ theft of the fire that he gave to humans. As Zeus well knew, Pandora would not resist disobeying the order not to open it, and consequently