Making a Virtue out of Hope

by Josh Moody

Positive thinking is not normally considered a strong point of my native English culture. We are better, nationally speaking, at cynicism or biting wit than looking on the bright side of life (and when we do we make it into a Monty Python tongue-in-cheek song). But in our time of desperate uncertainty about the future, where national insurance is up for grabs and bombs could be around the corner, it’s good to remind ourselves of the virtue of hope.

For me, this is what makes the music of Enya or the soulful voice of Norah Jones attractive. There is a wistful tone to their lyrics and melody that speaks of a desire for a certain certainty about the future. But of course hope is not restrictive to musical taste. It is the ubiquitous desire of the human race to ‘live for something’, if not ‘for someone.’ We are not easily content with only a present prosperity but desire and (indeed) need a ‘dream.’

That dream has had numerous eloquent proponents. We think perhaps most immediately of Martin Luther-King with his “I have a dream” speech atop Washington DC. Or maybe our thoughts turn to the “American Dream” of freedom and liberty for all. Down though history, and across the globe, humans seem resistant to being reduced to automatons and instead insist upon dreaming. I like to think of the iconic movie Blade Runner, where, in one of the final scenes, an android bemoans his passing, with all his experiences and achievements, as he stands in a storm saying, “And all these moments will be lost like tears in rain.”

Will they be lost? What future is there for us? It is easy to translate such a question – for a trained academic thinker like myself – immediately into the arena of sweeping social or political philosophical ponderables. My mind wants to talk about the drying up of our future in terms of the generational malaise that is seeing more young adults resist development to full adulthood (or unable financially to attain it), and the bitter cynicism that some recent failures to achieve ‘the dream’ have foisted upon western society.

I suspect though that this dream is always deeply personal. I think it can be felt and envisioned in a prison cell as much as a palace – be lacking in a palace as much as a prison cell. It is a virtue, not a social creation; it is a part of our human identity to dream, to long, to desire, to be incurably utopian. What is this dream for me? What is it for you? Perhaps for those of us with young children it is simply the desire to be able to finish reading the newspaper while our child is still having a nap!

Christianity at its best is a fulfillment of our dreams. It is the ‘hopes and fears of all the years’ which are met in Jesus Christ. Christianity at its worst is a nightmare. It becomes abused by immoral individuals – or systems – to advance political ends, or achieve personal power. It perverts into a ‘religion’, an institution of hierarchy and dominance, where faith, love and (indeed) hope are noticeable by their absence, but where power, politics, and self-serving officials rule the roost.

The fact of the matter is that real Christianity is about Jesus Christ. At Antioch (the book of Acts tells us, Acts 11:26), the disciples were first called ‘Christians’, presumably because they kept on talking about Christ. Where have we gone wrong? If someone was to label contemporary religious movements on the basis of the frequency of their terminological usage, would they be called “Anti-s” for all the things they stand against? But Christianity at its heart is a message about Christ crucified, the victim for the victimized, victorious over the vicious, Savior to the sinner.

That is where the dream lies, the hope – and the faith too, no doubt.