Hope in a Time of Despair and Presumption
A reminder to cling to hope despite world events
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Our world is filled with people struggling with despair or presumption instead of walking in hope. The church fairs little better. Every day our feeds are filled with stories of doom: AI doom, environmental doom, bureaucratic incompetence, wars, waste, present crises and looming crises. Stories of pastoral failures, of politician scandals, of people we know who are suffering loss. Targeted news stories tell us how we are inadequate and in danger, how we are threatened and can only find safety in the products and services offered by the Worldly Powers. All of this puts many people into a kind of perpetual despairβa sense that there is no hope for redemption, no hope for healing, no hope for reconciliation, no hope for justice, only more and more crawling through the wilderness, waiting for the end to come. And so we cling to our pleasures and our numbness and distraction in despair.
For others, the Worldly Powers offer another narrative, one of arrival and consummation. You have already achieved peace, success, safety, and prosperity. And the notable thing is, the Worldly Powers are again the judges of this standard. If you trust in them and their standards of living, their conception of personal fulfillment, their hope in endless self-development (even if it means through AI and transhumanism), then you will arrive. You wonβt need to hope. Because there will be nothing to hope for. We will conquer cancer, death, aging, memory, intelligence, unemployment, and poverty. And so we cling to our pleasures and our numbness and distraction in presumption.
But what does faithful hope look like? What does hope in Christ look like in a world dominated by despair and presumption? When wars and rumors of wars tempt us to despair and technological advances tempt us to the sin of presumption, what does it look like to walk in the virtue of hope?
