"I dont envision a very long life for myself"- Townes Van Zandt
I can honestly say that there is not a day that goes by when I dont spend considerable time thinking about the fact that Im going to die one day, that this life is defined first and foremost by its temporality, and that I really have no idea what that moment will be like when I actually breathe my last breath. Will I wake back up? What will I wake back up to? I know this sounds like morose thinking to some, but it is our inescapable human predicament and I just cant stop thinking about it. I want to know that I have hope, that we all have hope, for something beyond this life. I want to know that we are all going to wake back up and that the next time around everything will be better. And of this I want assurance.
I really have stopped believing that anything in this world can give me the kind of assurance I am speaking of and have longed for. No matter how deep my sense of spiritual conviction, or compelling the arguments of the preachers and teachers, or ancient the tradtions of faith, or inspired the words of Scripture, or phenomenal the person of Christ, I will never truly escape the presence in my life, whether minimal or great, of doubt and despair.
This morning I was reading the first chapter of II Corinthians in which the Apostle Paul discusses despair in his own life. He writes "For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again."
Ive spent some time today reflecting on that last line "on Him we have set our hope." Basically, Ive just been thinking a lot about hope. What is it? How do we have it? How do we use it? Paul talks about setting his hope on Christ and I find it interesting that he uses that language. At first it seems like Paul is just making a declarative statement, "He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us." But he doesnt stop there. He goes on to say "On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again." Now Im no Bible scholar but this seems to change the nature of Paul's statement.
Think of it this way. Imagine if I made plans to spend my entire weekend outdoors, on a camping trip or something else of that nature. And what if found out that there was 50% chance of rain the whole weekend. Now I could just completely give up and not go on the camping trip because I really have no idea whether its going to rain or not. Or I might say something like this to myself. I might say, "Its not going to rain. I have set my hope on the fact that its not going to rain." And I proceed to go on the camping trip.
Now thats a really weak analogy Im sure for a lot of reasons. Im not sure I feel comfortable saying that our hope for eternal life is like taking a bet on a 50% chance of rain. But I do think our knowledge of life after death can be a lot like our knowledge of the weather. We can make a lot of predictions and read a lot of the signs, but in the end we really dont know 100% for sure whats going to happen. But we make our plans anyway. We continue to live our life and set our actions completely toward what we think is going to happen. I think thats kind of what "settting our hope" on something is like. When Paul says, paraphrasing, "God will deliver me from death...I have set my hope on the fact that God will deliver me from death," Paul is qualifying what he declares to be knowledge with his own choice to believe and therefore hope in that knowledge.
Maybe this is a better analogy. Consider a man who decides to ask for a woman's hand in marriage. Now typically, in our society, that man would not take such a step until he has abundantly good reasons to believe that the woman will say yes. He would probably have an established level of intimacy and affection with this woman by this point, and he would feel an almost unshakeable confidence that she feels the same way about him as he does about her. For many relationships, the act of asking for a woman's hand in marriage only occurs after the man has eliminated all foreseen elements of risk, so that the act itself is something of a formality. The man by that point has already won the day and merely needs to do what is expected of him. Nevertheless, the man has no way of knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that the woman will indeed say yes, for who can really know the heart of a woman. Any number of unforeseeable factors may cause her to change her mind and give an unexpected and undesired response. The man just has no way of knowing. There is always going to be some degree of risk in kneeling down and pulling out that ring. So when he is aking he is in essence saying "Shes going to say yes...I am setting my hope on the fact that she will say yes." He declares his knowledge of what will happpen, but this knowledge must be qualified by hope.
I think this is perhaps a better analogy since we really do have a lot of good reasons, like the man who proposes to his longtime girlfriend, that we have hope for life beyond the grave. We have so many good reasons, that its a wonder that we have as many atheists in the world as we do. And yet we can never escape the need to "set our hope" on the thing which we have good reasons to believe. We never escape having to throw ourselves into what we hope for, hoping for it so much that we declare it to be doubtlessly true.
So I guess the question is do we live lives of people who hope, or as people who despair? I confess that I vascillate between the two options a lot. I dont think anything will ever truly prepare for the day when certain people in my life that I really care about actually die. Will I really believe that they have attained eternal life, if they are believers, or have begun to suffer eternal condemnation, if they are unbelievers. And what about the day, if this day ever comes, when I am confronted with my own death so that it comes not as a surprise but as an inevitable moment to be consciously reckoned with. How will I handle that? Will I confront it with unshakeable hope? Will I continue to set up my tent and start the fire even when I start to hear the distant crackling of thunder? Well I guess I dont know how I will act on that day. I realize its not really something that I can prepare myself for. But I can choose to set my hope upon eternal life in Christ today, with whatever strength I have to do so, however imperfect that may be. And thats just going to have to be enough for now.
Posted by todd at April 1, 2007 04:21 PM