Christian Hope

Christian Hope

Tomáš Halík
Optimism, as I understand it, is the conviction that “everything is OK,” and a naive tendency to trust that something will ensure that things will get better and better – that if, at this moment, we don’t happen to be living in “the best of all possible worlds,” we shall soon achieve that optimum. That redemptive “something” that optimism relies on can be scientific and technological progress, the power of the human intellect, revolution, social engineering, various schemes dreamt up by “engineers of human souls,” or pedagogical and social experiments in social reform – this is the secular version of optimism.
But there also exists a religious version of optimism, which consists of reliance on a consecrated stage director who extricates us from our problems like a “deus ex machina,” because, after all, we have reliable tools (all we need is to “believe with all our strength” and hold “prayer crusades”) whereby we can induce Him to satisfy our requests infallibly.
I reject secular and “pious” optimism alike, on account of both their naivete and their superficiality, and because of their unavowed striving to make the future (and possibly God) fit into our limited visions, plans and perceptions about what is good and right. Whereas Christian hope is openness and a readiness to search for meaning in what is to come, I sense at the back of this caricature a cockeyed assumption that we always know in advance, after all, what is best for us….
The mystery of the Resurrection is not a feel–good happy ending, cancelling and annulling the mystery of the cross. One of the great theologians of the twentieth century, J.B. Metz, emphasized that when we proclaim the message of Resurrection “we must not silence the cry of the Crucified” – otherwise instead of a Christian theology of Resurrection we offer a shallow “myth of victory.”
Belief in the Resurrection is not intended to make light of the tragic aspects of human life; it does not enable us to avoid the burden of mystery (including the mystery of suffering and death), or not to take seriously those who wrestle strenuously with hope, who “bear the burden and the heat of the day” of the external and internal deserts of our world. It does not assert some “religious ideology” and facile belief in place of following in the path of the crucified Christ….
Jesus is not content with dazzling us with “impossible feats,” spectacular miracles, fascinating visions and unprecedented theorems, as others have done and continue to do; He wants us to imitate Him, to be agents of the impossible: “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Jürgen Moltmann
Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: “Leave behind all hope, you who enter here”.