Advent and hope revisited

Hope seems like a luxury to me, the luxury of people who do not really have to worry about what is going to happen to them. I have to admit to myself that I often think that hope is a trifling convenience for people who have time and resources to spare. I have never been a very joyful or optimistic person. I can find it difficult to hope, difficult to see the positive side of things. If other people go through life spouting the axiom "nothing ventured, nothing gained" I learned that it is more often true that nothing ventured means nothing lost. Most of life is not what I would call a pearl of great price worth selling everything you have to obtain. Tell me that something is worth the trouble and I'd LIKE to believe you and I may believe it is great for you but that doesn't mean I'll see the positive side of things.


When hope gets thwarted year after year and in conflict after conflict you begin not merely to lose hope but to resent even the idea of hope, of entertaining hope. You begin to resent even wanting things to be better because that signifies dissatisfaction and it is better to be content with what you have, isn't it? Godliness with contentment is great gain so wanting more than what you already have might as well be coveting, right? Well .. .maybe not. I have in some ways grown too cynical and pessimistic. I have often felt as though I'm the sort of person who thinks Goth kids are too naive and optimistic about the human condition.

Yet Advent is a time when we start hearing songs with lyrics like, "a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices". I'm not sure how to grasp the significance of that a lot of the time. Hope not only seems like a luxury but the worm on the hook that lets people scam you. If my favorite authors are Dostoevsky and Kafka you may note that mine is not a disposition to believing the triumph of the human spirit amounts to much (unless we're talking about the Resurrection since I consider that a game changer). I have little patience for people who think they are some kind of John Galt hoping in their own hope whether hope in their innate greatness or the baptised version of thinking their mission from God entitles them to have obstacles removed. That can be a kind of atheistic faith in faith that Francis Schaeffer wrote about being inadequate. If Christians are naive in hoping for redemption atheists are just as incapable of living without false hope, which is why they vote. As you can see every fiber of my being is disposed to say things will not got better.

That is why Advent is a challenging season for me. It reminds me that God has made promises and that they are trustworthy and that God is not like the people who fail to keep promises through will or through weakness.