Loss of Hope: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD

Loss of Hope

Recently, I wrote about importing secular values and attitudes into the Church.  I failed, however, to mention perhaps the most destructive attitude which we have lately laid claim to and baptized.  It is, for lack of a better term, the loss of hope.  This loss of hope is manifested in a variety of ways.  It is expressed in doomsday prognostications concerning both the Church and society at large.  Such pronouncements fuel fear and, as one reader pointed out, fear sells. In many ways, we have invited in the ecclesiastical equivalent of “American carnage” with its selfishness and dystopian undertones even while we try to clothe it in the camel’s hair garb and leather belt of John the Baptist.

Now, this is not to say that we are not living in a time of extraordinary challenges, ones that may define church life for a generation or more.  The political captivity of the Church, on both the Right and the Left, is a mark of Cain that will not be easily expunged, nor can we simply allow that mark to be covered by a change of clothes.  Repentance is called for and the fruits of repentance will involve “coming out from among them” with all that such a move implies. On a practical level,  this will involve not only the reordering of many churches, but the upending of the careers of many in leadership positions.  Like the seven churches of St. John’s Apocalypse the faults have been laid bare, it only remains to be seen what we are now going to do.

The pandemic which has afflicted the world has shaken the life of the Church as well.  While it is primarily a medical and scientific challenge, it has morphed into a source of political contention, societal division and, with the vociferous assistance of some, that contention and division is also evident in our churches.  While I may have personal opinions as to the effectiveness of the scientific, medical and political responses to the pandemic, they would only be opinions and nothing more and, therefore, of little real value.  When it comes to the harm that such contention and division has brought to the Church, however, I would simply say that, for the most part, these have been self-inflicted wounds.  By making a litmus test of our opinions, we have failed not merely to listen to one another, but worse, we have failed to love one another.

We have become so intent on our opinions being “right” that we are in danger of creating a different gospel, one that changes according to the most recent headline, the most recent election, the most recent prophetic pronouncement, or the newest conspiracy theory.  Such a gospel is more akin to the augeries and oracles of paganism in Greece and Rome than it is to what is found in the pages of the New Testament or in the Church Fathers.

I think we have forgotten that the Christian gospel is, quite literally, good news.  It carries with it an extravagance, a divine extravagance of generosity towards others based upon the generosity of God towards us.  That extravagance includes an abundance of hope. This is not to say that we should adopt the character of a Pollyanna, but neither should we invoke the spirit of a Cassandra with increasingly hyperbolic pronouncements of doom and foreboding.  In the Roman Catholic process of beatification (that is, recognizing someone as a saint) one of the qualities required is that of “hilaritas” meaning cheerfulness or good humor.  The ability to see and laugh at that which is absurd, whether in society, the Church or in ourselves is to loosen our grasp on the created order and to recognize that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”.  It is a sign that our hope lies elsewhere.

A friend of mine once wrote, “You can be fairly certain that when faces grow long and sentences even longer, you are never very far from heresy”.  From Donatus, to Nestorius, to Savanarola, to the so-called new prophets of the religious Right, hope is set aside in favor of anger and calls for judgement.  In contrast, there is such a thing as a generous orthodoxy, one that is filled with encouragement and, yes, even with hope.  Such a generous orthodoxy is never cheap or, indeed, even easy to explain or implement, but it is nearly always cheerful and filled with hope. It is the opposite of what Paul Vitz describes as “selfism” in his book, ‘Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self Worship’ in which the whole business of inflated, self-taught, self-sustaining egos results in Church leaders whose mere opinions, prejudices and cultural attachments demand endorsement by their hearers and followers resulting in a hope that is either transitory (dependent on the next event, election or headline) or is nonexistent, having been replaced by grievance and anger.

Lewis Mumford wrote: “Without food man can survive for barely thirty days; without water for little more than three days; without air hardly for more than three minutes: but without hope he might destroy himself in an even shorter time.”

Yes, we are in a time of dislocation and suffering from politics, a pandemic and pronouncements from both the religious Right and Left.  In my opinion, however, it is not a time to lose hope.  In this time,  we might consider and apply Paul’s advice to the church in Rome: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD

The Project