“The reason for the hope that you have…”

Many Americans are placing a great deal of hope in the results of next week’s election. But what are we hoping for?

Originally, I’d planned to spend this week digging deeper into the implications of the Second Amendment. There is certainly much more to say about the deeply problematic relationship between God and Americans’ desire to own guns. I’m honestly most excited to have an excuse to think more on a topic I thought I had settled on long ago, but that my prayer and consideration for last week’s post showed had more layers than I realized. 

I’m stuck, though, on this thought of hope. Much of this has to do with the fact that tomorrow I get to speak with some colleagues at our school’s chapel on the need for civility in civics. At the last minute, our chaplain wisely added a question to our planned discussion on how we are finding hope in a season that fills so many with worry. After all, the fallout of the last presidential election inspires some valid fears about how Americans might respond to this year’s results. 

In these anxious times, I am excited to talk with my students about hope. Specifically, I am excited to remind them what—or really who—we should place our hope.

We should hope in Jesus: his saving grace, his promised return, when “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” We place our hope in a promise-keeping God, who has told us that He will redeem his creation, and all will be as it should. 

This is certainly a worthy hope to have. I love imagining what it will be like when Jesus rules as King. It’s not just that bad things will pass away: that’s just the beginning. Since evil cannot exist in God’s presence, all of creation will have to be fully redeemed. That means all the terrible things that afflict this world won’t just vanish; they will be replaced with their godly opposite. Greed will become selflessness; lust will turn to true love; peace and fellowship will overthrow war and hatred. All will be made right. 

The trouble, though, is that hope is a hard thing to have these days. A global pandemic killed millions; we’re making this planet a lot more difficult to inhabit; some have deemed our nation’s level of division “exceptional”, which is not an award I think most of us would hope to receive. Those are just some of the big-ticket items making hope harder today, not to mention any of the personal hardships we each have to endure. 

I wish following Jesus provided a quick fix to the absence of hope in today’s world, but I don’t often find that to be the case. In fact, I think following Jesus sometimes makes hoping even harder. As Christians, we are called to hope in an eternity we have little to do with ultimately bringing about. We have to wait. We have plenty to do while we wait, as we have been called to be the messenger’s of the Kingdom of God until Jesus’ return. Still, though we have good work to do, we are called to “hope for what we do not yet have,” and expected to “wait for it patiently”. Easy to say; hard to do. 

I think this might be why so many American Christians have chosen to hope in our nation more than our God. Placing hope in the United States feels tangible. We invest literal money into our nation’s economic future, then we are (sometimes) rewarded with even more money: a return on our investment. We devote ourselves to championing certain political causes, then are (sometimes) rewarded by seeing our values reflected in the laws of our nation. To be blunt: it feels like one can get a lot more, a lot more readily by hoping in the United States than in the Kingdom of God. 

This need to hope in something more immediate shows another example of us choosing our nation over our God. The passage above calls us to wait patiently for the promised hope that God will make everything right. This, however, is America; we don’t like waiting. When we want something, we want it now. When we order something, it better arrive the same day. When we work for something, we deserve to get what we’re owed, and fast. It’s simpler to hope in our nation, because our nation doesn’t ask us to be patient. This hope is, frankly, easier than the hope God calls us to have. 

But again I ask: what are we hoping for? 

I would argue not much of substance. When we place our hope in our country, all of our potential rewards are fleeting. Political victories last only until the next election cycle, if even that long. Financial success can seem to last a bit longer, but in the end is hollow as well. Even the hope of passing our wealth on to future generations is not guaranteed, given the increased volatility of global markets. Any fulfillment our nation provides will ultimately fade away. After all, as the Psalmist and Frank Capra both remind us: you can’t take it with you. 

Even while we’re enjoying the rewards of placing our hope in the United States, we will find ourselves unsatisfied. After all, worldly rewards for our hope just leave us wanting more. We hope and strive for a better salary, only to find it still doesn’t fulfill all our desires—our desires just get more expensive. Our hopes for bigger homes just prove we have the capacity to fill any amount of space with more stuff. Our hopes for a hotter partner show that hollow attraction—like the beauty it relies on—is ultimately fleeting and will always be surpassed, replaced with more longing for the next person who catches our eye. All our nation’s rewards fade, and chasing them only produces a deeper, more ultimate lack of satisfaction. This hardly strikes me as a worthy subject for our hope. 

Jesus, however, offers something so much better. 

After all, Jesus invites us to hope beyond ourselves. In Jesus, we find the promise of not just our eternal salvation, peace, redemption, and satisfaction, but that of all of creation. When we place our hope in the Kingdom of God and strive to make it known, we bring healing and fulfillment not just to ourselves, but to every single person who—by the power of the Holy Spirit—we can lead to a saving faith in our Lord. 

We don’t even have to be all that patient to enjoy the rewards of placing our faith in Jesus. In the passage above, Paul calls us to wait for the eternal fulfillment of our hope. Eternity is not, however, all we get as followers of Jesus. We get to devote each day to something eternally significant. Every time we choose to speak, act, and live like Jesus, we can draw people closer to God. When we work for the Kingdom, we can have confidence that everything we do matters, forever. Our hope in Jesus brings eternal salvation for us, and invests our earthly lives with infinite meaning. This is so much more than anything our nation offers—any house, any salary, any sex life, anything—could ever hope to provide. 

From what I can tell, it seems the Kingdom of God is a much more worthy focus for our hope than the United States. I consider it one of the greatest privileges of my life that I get to remind my students of this fact. I hope each of them—and you, if you would be so encouraged—will carry the confidence of hoping in Jesus into next week, and every week beyond that.