So what virtues do you aspire towards? If you want a conversation to take a turn to the serious, it’s a good question to ask. Some people will answer promptly – perhaps citing some of the more commonly listed virtues – courage, justice and integrity. Others might be more exotic in their choice. Perhaps they will leave you perplexed because they selected procrastination, doubt and detachment. Yet others will be rendered speechless. That’s not to say they don’t have any virtues, but it probably means they haven’t spent much time thinking about them.
In a recent podcast on Stirrers and Saints Aaron Chidgzey and I interviewed Bec Oates, newly appointed CEO of Tear Fund Australia, and asked her to list her top three virtues. True, we framed them as values – and technically they are different – but let’s not quibble about that. Her list intrigued me: Integrity (no surprise in that one), Restorative Justice (it was the restorative qualifier that interested and delighted me); and Hope (which is the one that has set me thinking and sparked this post.)
Hope doesn’t often make it onto the list of virtues – most people simply being pragmatic. The usual attitude is, “I’ll be hopeful if there is something to be hopeful about.” In other words, I will be hopeful if the evidence is pointing in the right direction, and things seem to be going the way I want. Pragmatic hope is, of course, pragmatic. A sudden change in the landscape, and hope levels might plunge. Like politicians anxiously watching the latest poll results, if our hope is circumstantial we will find it fluctuates by the day. In other words, it is not yet an inherent quality that has sunk deeply into our being.
So why embrace hope as a deep value – something virtuous that we can hold onto even when things go badly wrong?
It seems to me that hope is a faith based virtue – a deeply Christian virtue. Because God is, I hope. Because God is engaged in the world, I hope. Because God has the last word, I hope. Becoming even more specific, because of the resurrection of Jesus, I hope. It’s that conviction that led Paul to burst out in 1 Cor 15:55 “Oh death where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” With death no longer the defining life marker, new vistas open up.
Courage usually ranks high on the list of virtues, but I wonder if it is possible without hope. While it is noble to step in and assist with a valid but lost cause, it’s hard to do that if there is no underlying hope that this little act of protest, this flickering light in the dark, is not meaningless. Hope keeps motivation alive, and points us towards courage. Our brave actions are not futile, even though they might seem to be in the short term.
Some might view hope as a form of escapism – a whistling in the dark, a determined refusal to face reality. No it’s not. It would be if hope allowed you to escape from your aspirations and highest goals, but that’s just what it doesn’t allow. So long as there is a flicker of hope, we engage.
Lamentations 3 is perhaps the most poignant chapter in the Bible (ok, I’ve said that about several chapters, but it is right up there). It starts in the place of deepest despair – I could cite so many of its verses but 16-17 are as good as any: “He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust. Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is.” V 20 brings the despairing first half to a close: “I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.”
And then it changes… not tritely, but after a conscious choice to opt for hope. It comes in the astounding v21-24: “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him!’”
Don’t you love the way it’s expressed? Yet I still dare to hope. Put differently, in spite of the present circumstances, something very, very deep inside me refuses to give up. It is the deepest of hopes coming from the deepest of convictions – that the faithful love of the Lord never ends. Even more, I dare to hope when I remember that “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him.”
This is the kind of hope that seeps out of us even when we are in the midst of our most confronting days. It keeps us positively engaged and reminds us to continue to do right. It takes courage to hold on to hope, but even more, it takes hope to birth courage. Romans 5:5 assures us that hope does not disappoint us. Of course Paul is not talking about our hope that we are clever or smart enough to get on top of difficulties. He is talking about the grace and mercy of God, and the presence of God’s Spirit in our hearts. And that never disappoints us.
Whatever this week holds for you, why not dare to hope? It’s a virtue worth cultivating. It could give you the courage to do worthy things.
Nice chatting…
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