Born: June 9, 1972
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October 10, 2003 at 5:13 pm
Hope...
Last night at our Impact Group, we read the essay “Hope,” by, C.S. Lewis (the essay can be found in Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity). After reading the essay, we spurred some conversation with a number of prewritten questions. We covered a variety of subjects, from how the media distorts peoples’ perception of hope and heaven to how our own hope and perception of heaven affects the way we live our lives. It was quite an interesting discussion. There was one thing that struck me as extrordinarily profound, though, and was most definitely new to me.
One of the members of our group brought up a fairly taboo subject — at least, taboo in some “we’ve got Christ so we’re all right” circles. This subject was the feeling of utter hopelessness; the times when we are so overwhelmed with life or circumstance that we pray to God asking that He would just end it then and bring us up into heaven. (Of course, these feelings aren’t feelings or inventions for suicide, but once in a while something happens that makes us wish that we were literally in our Father’s arms.)
The moment that he said this, I had a revelation. It was a revelation of the hope that believers of Christ truely have. The hope that faith gives us. The hope that indwells in us because of the Spirit. You see, when my friend spoke of his feelings (although fleeting and unrealistic), he was ashamed. He was afriad that he, someone who possessed faith in our Creator, would think about something like having his life end.
“No!” I proclaimed. “Don’t be ashamed of this, be thankful! Aren’t we fortunate to have the hope of God’s kingdom in times like these? Isn’t this the hope that we are talking about? The hope of one day being in the presence of God?” It was amazing.
I went on to tell a story about something that had happened earlier that day.
I teach at a school for kids with emotional and behavioral disorders (or, at least, I will still be teaching there for the next week). This day, we had a kid who was actually on the verge of literal suicide. Earlier in the year, we developed a plan for him in which he could grade his emotional status on a scale from one to ten. This day, he graded himself a “one.” He was hopeless. He didn’t want to continue. He wanted to die. After a few hours of dealing with his emotions, though, we were able to get him to sign a “suicide contract” (a form that allows students to promise that they will not try to kill themselves that day). He was up to a “three” at that point and later on, up to a “five” (which is pretty normal for him).
My revelation was that no matter how low we get — no matter how depressed or hopeless or helpless or overwhelmed — we, as believers of Jesus Christ, always have the hope of His abundant life to hold onto. It is this hope — the hope of heaven and eternal life with Him — that keeps us going. It is why we, in C.S. Lewis’ words, “make it the main object of life to press on.”
My student at school does not yet possess this hope. He has the hope of his hobbies, his friends, his group home, his weekly visits to see his family… But, he doesn’t possess the hope of complete and total communion with his true Father in his “true country.” The hope that delivers us from the abyss of self-loathing and self-reliance.
The hope of heaven is why we continue.
Lewis’ entire essay is below.
Hope Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth, and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more-food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.
Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all-except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sort of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may have been a very interesting job: but something has evaded us. Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one.(1) The Fool’s Way.-He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he would really catch the mysterious something we are all after. Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type. They spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman (through the divorce courts), from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is “the Real Thing” at last, and always disappointed.There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.
(2) The Way of the Disillusioned “Sensible Man”.-He soon decides that the whole thing was moonshine. “Of course,” he says, “one feels like that when one’s young. But by the time you get to my age you’ve given up chasing the rainbow’s end.” And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, as he would say, “to cry for the moon.” This is, of course, a much better way than the first, and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society. It tends to make him a prig ( he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls “adolescents” ), but on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably. It would be the best line we could take if man did not live forever. But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow’s end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed “common sense” we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.
(3) The Christian Way.-The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on that other country and to help others to do the same.”
Lewis, C. S. (1943). Mere Christianity. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing. P. 118-121.
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