Living in Hope

Last December I received a letter that read in part:

Since 1978 my husband and I have been doing research on what nuclear arms and nuclear war mean and on how to stop this madness. We are members of various church and political groups that are involved in education and in applying political pressure toward bilateral disarmament. We don't know what else to do.

A type of paralysis is beginning to creep into us and those around us. I find my young friends to be particularly stuck in this problem. The specific problem is a loss of a sense of the future. We had planned to get pregnant in April or so. We wonder now if we should. Given the present course of things, a war seems inevitable.

I never realized how much I lived in the future. I try to live in the present, but I catch myself not bothering to do little things because I don't want to waste my time on a future that seems to be already non-existent. I imagine that this is baldly a form of despair. We are still fighting and we haven't given up, but we have lost a sense of the future, especially for our children, and it is eerie to live without it.

I have received more than one letter like this in the past year. In these difficult times, where do we find hope? Among our readers and many others, this is becoming a frequent and heartfelt question. We decided to address this question throughout 1984 in the pages of Sojourners and are specifically devoting this issue to the search for hope in hard times. For that purpose we went to people all over the country and in various corners of the world with the question, "Where do you find hope?"

The responses are as rich and diverse as the faith and experience of the men and women we asked. They write about hope from the black experience in the United States, a prison in the Philippines, a little town on the Nicaragua-Honduras border, urban churches in Detroit and Cincinnati, campaigns and communities of nonviolent resistance to the arms race, a religious order, a theological seminary, the international peace movement, and the struggles for justice in South Africa and Latin America.

Every one of their situations provides countless good reasons to give up hope. For these men and women, hope is not an abstract theological issue; it is the substance of the faith necessary for survival. Each has known the agony and loneliness of despair. Each has had to find the kind of hope that is not destroyed by the failures, defeats, and sufferings of the moment. They are people accustomed to difficult days and hard times, but they are people who have learned where to turn for hope. They are all still on the road and fighting the good fight. That simple fact alone is reason for hope, and each of their lives is, for me, a concrete sign of hope.

The powers that be are counting on our losing hope. That is their hope. Some people, especially in places of high political authority, are just waiting for us to wear down and out. It is the persistence of hope, even in the midst of their seeming domination, that is the single greatest threat to their absolute authority. To hope against their power is to undermine the illusions and control they depend upon.

The poor of the world, on the other hand, are hoping we don't give up. Their very lives are at stake in keeping hope alive. Our despair and resignation do them no good at all. Only in hope can we join with them in the quest for justice and freedom. For the poor and for those who take their side, hope is not a feeling or mood, it is a necessary choice for survival.

Hope means more than just hanging on. It is the conscious decision to see the world in a different way than most others see it. To hope is to look through the eyes of faith to a future not determined by the oppressive circumstances of the present. To hope is to know that the present reality will not have the last word. It is to know, despite the pretensions and cruelties of idolatrous authorities, that God rules. It is God who will have the last word.

We need more than resistance; we need hope. A radical judgment upon the present situation is not enough; we need a positive vision of where we are going. To dig in our heels and say no to the present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing. If we are just holding out and hanging on, we will not last long. But if we are beginning to live out new possibilities, we can spark a movement of hope.

That is why it is particularly important for people who are trying to build a different future to live now in a way that demonstrates real hope for that future. I'm not speaking of the kind of false optimism and denial of reality that so many still hang on to. I'm speaking of the concrete choice to live in hope, despite harsh and dangerous realities. That choice is an act of faith. It can only come out of the deepest confidence that God is still God and that, come what may, nothing will separate us from the love of God.

In the days ahead, the world will desperately need people who can demonstrate that kind of faith and exemplify a radical hope in the face of many reasons for discouragement. It is precisely because the times are so bad that we need to plant, build, and create new life. It could be that the most appropriate response to the growing storm clouds of war is to have and raise children with the determination that they will have a future. To give up is to succumb to despair; to act in hope is to live in faith.

Easter will soon be upon us. The resurrection stands as the most radical sign of hope we have. The authorities who killed Jesus were trying to kill hope. They tried desperately to prevent the resurrection, and they failed. Their plans were undone, and hope was alive forevermore.

Only forgetting the resurrection can kill hope now. That is exactly what those in power have always wanted us to do. But we will not forget. Though sometimes discouraged, we will not forget. Though often defeated, we will not forget. Though even in despair, we will not forget. We will remember, and because we remember, we will live and act in hope.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine.