Signs of Hope are Everywhere!

Here are some grim facts about reality today:

Gas prices are way too high... The economy is in serious trouble (especially here in Michigan)... The political dialogue in this country has declined to a level that would make our Founding Fathers ashamed to be called Americans... America is engaged in a war that, in my opinion, is no longer justified if it ever was... Too many teenagers are graduating from high school without adequate knowledge, direction, and confidence to make their way in the world... Divorces, teen pregnancies, abortions, and sexual depravity continues to pollute our moral landscape... And there is devastation, poverty, and injustice on every continent of the globe.

Our world is clearly flawed on some fundamental level. A person...even a Christian...could easily be tempted to throw up his or her hands and choose cynicism, despair, or indifference. God knows that I am often tempted to lean in that direction.

But then I return again and again to the writings of the Inklings and I find that, in spite of all temptations, I must choose a different attitude.

In his classic Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton distinguishes between three ways of looking at this world. The first is pessimism, (pretty much described above) in which one sees the evil, injustice, and inhumanity in the world and immediately concludes that the world is unredeemable. This pessimism, Chesterton writes, is not an option for any true Christian.

Secondly, one may choose what Chesterton calls "rational optimism," in which a person looks at the world around him or her through rose-colored classes, simply avoiding any engagement with the evils and injustices of the world, and merely settling for the way things are. While I'm sure we have all run into Christians like this, Chesterton would argue that this is also not an option.

The third option is what Chesterton labels "irrational optimism," and this is the true attitude to be espoused by the disciple of Christ. Irrational optimism is when the person sees what the world has become, acknowledges its fallenness, but still wills to see a deeper hope. The Christian believes that in spite of the wickedness and inhumanity all around us, the world is literally saturated with God's grace, beauty, and goodness. If we look hard enough, even when we are enmeshed in the worst that life can throw at us, we can find signs of hope, signs that God is still acting redemptively to fulfill His purposes in the world.

In Tolkien's The Return of the King, there is an incredible line that I think of often. It involves one of my favorite characters, Sam Gamgee, when he is in the devastated land of Mordor, exhausted from a long journey, with evil all around him. Here are Tolkien's poignant words:

"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

May God give us the wisdom to know that evil and injustice, in spite of their imposing presence in our lives, are nothing more than superficial Shadows that have been defeated forever in the Cross of Jesus Christ. And when confronted with evil and injustice, may God give us the "irrational optimism" to look deeper and to see His glory and grace...and then to go forth boldly with the spiritual armor to resist the Shadow and to do our part in restoring God's masterpiece of Creation.