Sunday, April 27, 2025

God Does Not Affirm All Behaviors (Real Love Embraces and Excludes)

(Redeemer Monroe)

In this post I attempt to establish one point, using 'pedophilia' as an example.

"Pedophilia is an ongoing sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children. It is a paraphilia, a condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depends on objects, activities, or even situations that are considered atypical. Pedophilia is defined as recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children—generally age 13 years or younger—over a period of at least six months. Pedophiles are more often men and can be attracted to either or both sexes." (Psychology Today)

Does God love the pedophiliac? Yes.

Does God affirm sexual activity with a child? No.

The Christian belief is that pedophile activity is sin. That is, it misses the mark God places before us. (See, e.g., what in ethics is called "divine command theory.")

This troubling, yet simple, example proves the following: God does not affirm all behaviors.

Neither do people affirm all behaviors.

Whether they believe in God or not, good parents morally screen what beliefs are to be championed in their home. The good parent will not allow their child to be taught the beauty and happiness of pedophilic beliefs and behaviors.

All institutions have moral filters. These moral filters emerge from worldviews. People may differ in their worldviews. People do not differ in having moral filters rooted in a social imaginary. (See Charles Taylor here.)

Churches are no different. As a pastor of a church, I testify that we would not allow someone to teach our children, youth, and adults, that God affirms sexual activity with children. Obviously.

Every person, every institution, embraces some things and excludes other things. (On this, see Amy Chua's Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.) That's what doctrine does, and why doctrine is important. Understand this: Real love embraces and excludes.

The matter than becomes how, as Christians, we are still to love the pedophile, while establishing moral boundaries. To begin with, a lot will depend on how the pedophile views pedophilia. And, do they want us to embrace this belief, or exclude the belief? If the latter, do they want help?

Now, instead of 'pedophilia', plug in any sin.

Thursday, April 24, 2025

God Is Love (Making Sense of This)

(Redeemer Church, Monroe, MI)

The Christian idea of God as a three-personed being is brilliant. It makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love.

Gerald Sittser writes:

"Over roughly four hundred years Christians came to two startling conclusions. First, they concluded that God is a relationship of love; God is one in community, or a tri-unity. God is love not simply because he loves his creation but because he is love within himself. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father. The Holy Spirit, who lives in our hearts, is the perfect, pure and personal essence of that relationship, thus drawing us into the love that exists within the very being of God.

Second, they concluded that Christ is both perfectly divine and perfectly human... "

(Sittser, Water From a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality From Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries, pp. 22-23)

The War Over Beliefs, Statements, Words

(Green Lake Christian Conference Center, Wisconsin)

(I am re-posting this to keep it in play.)

We are engaged in a battle over beliefs.

Beliefs are expressed in statements.

Statements are houses built with words, whether written or non-written.

To control words, statements, and beliefs - that's Orwellian totalitarianism.

Johnathan Haidt (one of my favorite thinkers today - see this, e.g.) expresses our situation this way.

"What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:

Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.

The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past."

- The Atlantic, May 2022

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

When "Freedom" Goes Berserk (Freedom Is Not Anarchic)

(Free-range squirrel, on my back porch)

At Redeemer we love the word "freedom." I love this word! Jesus said, in John 8:32, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

The truth will set you free... from what? The answer is: from either oppressive rule, or no rule at all. Both are forms of bondage.

The latter form of bondage (no rule at all) is called "anarchy." A(n) - arche; literally, "no ruler." Think of nations where governments fall and, for a period of time, there is no rule. When you think "anarchy" think, e.g., of Somalia, or Syria. Who's in charge? Who is leading? When no one leads in a good and loving way, the people suffer. Anarchic situations are physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually brutal.

"Freedom" is essentially related to "rule" or structure. This is a mistake some Jesus-followers, especially young and immature ones, make. If they come from fundamentalist law-oriented families it is not uncommon to see them go berserk with new-found freedom. Or, to flirt with sin, as if they are "free" to do so, oblivious to the fact that sin is precisely the prison house they have been set free from.

The pendulum swings from oppressive structure to equally oppressive non-structure.

"I am free to do anything I want!" is the cry of the Christian "anarchist" who is seduced by the lie that freedom is the absence of structure.

The truth is that freedom is always a function of structure, and there are structures that oppress and structures that liberate. And, there are plenty of religious structures that, in the name of Christ but not the truth of Christ, make people more miserable than when they were imprisoned in their sins. (Note: I am not talking about the kind of liberating anarchism found, e.g., in Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel.)

As a guitar player and instructor I know that any musician who wants to excel and be creative on their instrument must learn technique. Guitar techniques are massively rule-bound and structured. Every guitarist who is worth anything practices patterns and structures and disciplines themselves to do so.

There's no such thing as "structureless freedom." "Structureless freedom" is the logical equivalent of "square circle" or "married bachelor." To live anarchically in this sense is to use one's freedom to choose imprisonment. Any free choice that increases your bondage or addiction or the bondage and addiction of others is evil. Like, e.g., being "free" to indulge your sexual appetites outside of marriage. Put in Jesus' way, it is untruthful.

Choose your structure carefully and live within it. Use your freedom in Christ to dwell in the freedom-bringing structure of his kingdom. Use your freedom to love and build up others and to engage in the prison-breaking, redemptive activity of God.

The term "Christian anarchist" is an oxymoron, since the true Christian anarchist does place himself or herself under a "rule" and within a structure, that rule and structure being the the Lordship of Christ. True Christian anarchy is not the absence of rule under the pretense of freedom, but the refusal to come under the rule of the kingdoms of this world as if, and with the hope, that our solution is yet another political one.

As Jesus said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” These words have proven especially redemptive to the many Jesus-followers who live in the "Somalias" of this world.

We all live under some rule or reign.

The day I chose to live in Christ was my prison break, and I have no desire to use my freedom to go back.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Character Vs. Reputation

(Sunrise in the park, across the street from our house.)

I have seen websites advertising ways to clean up your reputation. You may have an online reputation that is less than marketable. These websites promise to sanctify "you" by removing your sins (real or rumored) and producing a shiny, sparkling, attractive "you." This is called "reputation

management." I kid you not.

Your sordid reputation can be manipulated, for a cost. But what about your character?

Money cannot help you here. Your reputation, which money can airbrush, is not your character. Your character is about the real "you." Money cannot change that unless, perhaps, you begin sacrificially, and from a heart of compassion, giving it away to the poor.

The real "you" includes who you are when offline. This is what God cares about. God develops character, not reputation.

Everyone has a reputation. Jesus did. Isn't he just the "carpenter's son?" "He's from Nazareth, right?"

Reputation may align with character. You may have a reputation of being a kind person. If you are kind, in character, which means kind at home, kind on the road, kind in the workplace, kind to your spouse, kind when alone, then your reputation of being kind aligns with who you truly are.

Several years ago I was one of the presenters at an ecumenical prayer gathering. As I entered the auditorium a Roman Catholic leader approached me. He said he was surprised to see me here, because he had heard that I hate Roman Catholics. I told him that was untrue. I shared how one of our city's priests, with whom I was friends, had invited me to speak at the annual Unity Service. I have no idea where he got that from. Such is the nature of "reputation."

Forget about what people repute you to be. Focus on connecting to Jesus, who is forming himself in you. Grow and mature into Christ. Let God take care of whatever follows.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Easter Week - That Great Day!

(Johnny Lang singing one of my favorite songs, "That Great Day.")

Easter Day - That Great Day

The greatest days of my life so far are...

... One day in May, 1970, when God became real to me in a very experiential way. I knew He existed, and that He incarnated Himself in Jesus.

... August 11, 1973. I married Linda.

... July 10, 1982, and September 25, 1985. My sons Dan and Josh were born. (And my stillborn son David died...)

And... the days my grandson Levi (now 5) and granddaughter Harper (now 3) were born!

My life is formed and shaped around these events. They color everything I do, and will do, for all my earthly existence.

The greatest holy day of my Jesus-life is Easter Sunday. That's today! As I worship this morning I'll close my eyes and say, for the bazillionth time, "Thank You, God, for rescuing me." It's fifty-five years since my rescue.

My heart will overflow with gratitude this morning at Redeemer. The chains of self-hatred and death that bound me have been broken.

I'm thinking of Romans 5:12-21. It's about the reign of condemnation and death brought about by Adam's sin, and the grace-gift of righteousness effected by Christ's death and resurrection. In Adam, death reigns. In Christ, grace reigns. Even more than this, we who are in Christ now reign in life.

Sometimes I go to a cemetery to pray. I stand in a field of tombstones. Because I am in Christ, I'm also standing in fields of grace (Romans 5:2). In the kingdom of God tombstones don't rule. Grace does. Empty tombs reign in the kingdom of heaven, because one tomb opened 2000 years ago.

Sin produces condemnation. "Condemnation," from the Greek word katakrima, has the root idea of separation or discrimination. Katakrima means: judgment coming down on someone. Because Grace Reigns, there's no more condemnation, no more separation. Grace and mercy are pouring down on me.

THIS IS HUGE! This morning I celebrate this with my Redeemer brothers and sisters and 2.5 billion others around the world.

You can't out-sin the grace of God or out-fail the mercy of God.

The greatest day in history: one Passover Day around 37 A.D. (That's right.)

That Great Day when sin, condemnation, shame, and death were defeated.

And, in my life, there's one more Great Day to come...

REFLECTION

1. Take time today to thank God for...
- sending Jesus to rescue humanity from sin, condemnation, and death
- rescuing you from sin, condemnation, and death

2. Pray that you may experience and know what it means to "reign in life" through Christ, and by the Holy Spirit.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Easter Week - Jesus Screams In the Absolute Darkness

(Mount of Olives, Jerusalem)

SCRIPTURE - MATTHEW 27:45-46

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THESE VERSES?

As Jesus hung suspended on a cross an unnatural darkness began in the middle of the day and continued into the natural darkness of sunset.

New Testament scholar R. T. France writes: “Given the symbolic significance of the darkness as a divine communication there is little point in speculating on its natural cause: a solar eclipse could not occur at the time of the Passover full moon though a dust storm (‘sirocco’) or heavy cloud are possible.” (France, Mark, 651)

N.T. Wright writes: “It can’t have been an eclipse, because Passover happened at full moon, so that the moon would be in the wrong part of the sky.” (Wright, Mark for Everyone, 215)

Craig Keener says that the darkness "could come from heavy cloud cover. But the Gospel writers use it to convey a more profound theological point. (Keener, Matthew, 685)

However it happened, this was a God-caused darkness. Jesus is bearing the load of the sins of all humanity. Sin causes separation; in this case, essentially from God. Sin separates us from Light. Sin and light cannot coexist.

Years ago Linda and I and our sons visited Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs. We were guided into the depths of these tunnels to a place where we were told that, when the lights in the cave were turned off, we would experience "absolute darkness." I thought, "This is cool!"

The lights went off. We stood there, for several seconds. Our guide said, "You are now experiencing absolute darkness. Place your hand right in front of your eyes. You will not be able to see it."

Our guide was right. It was so completely dark that I could not see what was right before me. Had the lights failed us that day, we would not be able to see each other. I imagine we would say things like, "Are you still near me?" "Are you here?" "We've got to stay close to each other!" And, "Don't abandon me while I'm in this darkness!"

On that day 2000 years ago the darkness that covered the land was not absolute. But the existential darkness was. The thickness of all this world's sin and failure and shame and guilt weighed on the heart of One Man. Out of this physical and ungodly darkness Jesus screamed.

"Screamed?" I think so. The Greek wording here is: ἐβόησεν ὁἸησοῦς φωνῇ μεγάλῃ. Those last two Greek words are transliterated: phone megale. A mega-phone! Jesus mega-screamed these words over and over and over again and again, since the verb indicates continuous action.

He doesn’t call God “Father” but Ὁ θεόςμου ὁ θεός μου… “My God… My God…” Jesus is in relationship with Abba Father God, but it now feels like abandonment. Six hours after he was placed on the cross, three of them being hours of darkness, Jesus feels abandoned by God.

We don't know how long the feeling lasted. Assume three hours. Perhaps He screamed over and over for that long. And know that, for Jesus, it was utterly real and all-embracing. (Craig Keener comments that "the early church would hardly have invented Jesus’ cry of despair in uttering a complaint about alienation from God, quoting Ps. 22.” Keener, Matthew, 682)

As the weight of this world’s evil converged on Jesus He was giving his life as “a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28). The sins of the “many,” which he is bearing, have for the first and only time in his experience caused a cloud to come between him and “Abba” – Father God. 1 Peter 2:24 explains it this way:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. Paul, in Galatians 3:13, writes: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."

The curse of sin is that it makes a great divide between us and God. Sin breaches relationship. As Jesus bears our sin He experiences the Great Separation. Listen to how N.T. Wright expresses this.

“Out of the unexplained cosmic darkness comes God’s new word of creation, as at the beginning… And it all happens because of the God-forsakenness of the son of God. The horror which overwhelmed Jesus in Gethsemane, and then seems to have retreated again for a few hours, came back in all its awfulness, a horror of drinking the cup of God’s wrath, of sharing the depth of suffering, mental and emotional as well as physical, that characterized the world in general and Israel in particular. The dark cloud of evil, Israel’s evil, the world’s evil, Evil greater than the sum of its parts, cut him off from the one he called ‘Abba’ in a way he had never known before. And welling up from his heart there came, as though by a reflex, a cry not of rebellion, but of despair and sorrow, yet still a despair that, having lost contact with God, still asks God why this should be.” (N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, 216-217)

REFLECTION

1. Take time today to slow down in your heart, get alone by yourself, bow before God, and think of the passion of the Christ.

2. Resolve in your heart to never again take for granted what Jesus has done for you. Consider how and what it means that He bore your sins, and by His stripes you are healed.

3. Express in your own words thanks to God for what He has accomplished on the cross, which is: your justification; your being set right with God.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Four Books from Kindle Unlimited

(Monroe County)

I pay a monthly fee to access Kindle Unlimited. This allows me to load qualifying books on my Kindle, for free.

Sometimes there's a surprise. Today there were four of them. For free, I got...

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope, by Curt Thompson, M.D.

The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is, by N. T. Wright.

Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive Into Paul's Greatest Letter, by N. T. Wright.

Paul: A Biography, by N. T. Wright.

I began reading Paul yesterday. It's going to be good!

Wednesday, April 09, 2025

Toxic Church?

To understand toxic churches and toxic leaders, check these out.

When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse, by Chuck DeGroat.

The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It, by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel.

The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success at Work and in Relationships in a Shortcut World, by John Townsend.

I have a PhD scholar-friend who lived in Africa and studied toxic leaders. He recommended this to me.

The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--and How We Can Survive Them, by Jean Lipman-Blumen.

How toxic can a leader be? Read this. The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, by Peter Godwin.

Here are two books by Peter Scazzaro that are good.

The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives.

The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World.

Tuesday, April 08, 2025

George Mavrodes On the Weirdness of Moral Obligations in a Russellian World

Notes on George Mavrodes' essay "Religion and the Queerness of Morality.” (Also in Pojman and Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology).

Former University of Michigan Professor of Philosophy George Mavrodes writes: “Many arguments for the existence of God may be construed as claiming that there is some feature of the world that would somehow make no sense unless there was something else that had a stronger version of that feature or some analogue of it.”

Which means: Noetic structures must account for experiential realities.

For example, morality. Some have claimed that if there was no God, then there would be no morality either. As Dostoevski said, “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.”

Sartre echoed this idea.

Mavrodes’ purpose: “The suggestion that morality somehow depends on religion is rather attractive to me. It is this suggestion that I wish to explore in this paper.”

Mavrodes’ method: “I will outline one rather common nonreligious view of the world, calling attention to what I take to be its most relevant features. Then I shall try to portray some sense of the odd status that morality would have in a world of that sort.”

Mavrodes looks at Bertrand Russell’s nonreligious worldview – a "Russellian world." What would that be like? He quotes Russell’s famous statement from “A Free Man’s Worship”:

"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

Mavrodes asks: What if the world was like this? What would be the status of morality in such a world? To get at this Mavrodes lists the “most relevant features” of a Russellian world.

They are:

1) Phenomena such as “minds” and “consciousness” “are the products of entities and causes that give no indication of being mental themselves.”
a. The causes are ‘accidental collocations of atoms” with “no prevision of the end they were achieving.”
b. What we call “life” is a latecomer in the long history of the earth.
2) “Human life is bounded by physical death and each individual comes to a permanent end at his physical death.”
3) “Not only each individual but also the human species is doomed to extinction “beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.”

Those are the main features of a Russellian world.

Next Mavrodes introduces the idea of “Russellian benefits.” “A Russellian benefit is one that could accrue to a person in a Russellian world.”

E.g., to live to a contented old age.

Or, to have sexual pleasure.

Or, to have a good reputation.

BUT… “going to heaven” is NOT a Russellian benefit. It does not fit in a Russellian world.

Mavrodes next asks: Could the actual world be Russellian?

In the actual world human beings do exist, and they have moral obligations to act in a certain way.

If they do not act in those ways, then they are judged adversely. (Such as, e.g., the young man who killed 9 people in a church yesterday.)

“People who do not fulfill their obligations are not merely stupid or weak or unlucky; they are morally reprehensible.”

“Morality ascribes to particular people an obligation to do a certain thing on a certain occasion.” If such a thing is not done (what Mavrodes calls a “final obligation) then this subjects the person to adverse judgment.

“Pleasure, happiness, esteem, contentment, self-realization, knowledge – all of these can suffer from the fulfillment of a moral obligation.” Which means: following a moral obligation can cost you such things. You may, e.g., suffer.

Mavrodes' point is: in the actual world people experience, not simply moral feelings, but moral obligations or, in Kant's sense, moral duties.

But does it logically follow, necessarily, that following a moral obligation will have some corresponding personal benefit for me in a Russellian world? The answer is: no, it does not follow. In other worlds, it could follow; i.e., moral obligations could always bring some personal benefit.

While it does not logically follow, it still is false that it does follow. In other words, moral obligations do not in fact always lead to personal benefits.

“In the actual world we have some obligations that, when we fulfill them, will confer on us no net Russellian benefit. – in fact, they will result in a Russellian loss.”

“If the world is Russellian, then Russellian benefits and losses are the only benefits and losses, and also then we have moral obligations whose fulfillment will result in a net loss to the one who fulfills them.” This is what Mavrodes finds “queer,” or weird, or strange.

Namely, that in the actual world we do have moral obligations. And, such obligations do not always lead to some personal benefit; indeed, there could be personal danger and loss as a result of acting morally. If the world is Russellian, then “the world that included such a fact would be absurd – we would be living in a crazy world.”

Mavrodes goes on to explain why that would be absurd, or weird. He makes a distinction between moral “feelings” and moral “obligations.” In a Russellian world moral feelings would not be weird. But moral obligations would be. (Mavrodes acknowledges his indebtedness to Kant here.) Or, in a Russellian world morality as having a survival value would not be weird. But, again, moral obligations would be weird in a Russellian world.

Mavrodes writes: “An “evolutionary” approach… cannot serve to explain the existence of moral obligations, unless one rejects my distinction [between moral feelings and moral obligations] and equates the obligations with the feelings.”

The argument: “Morality… seems to require us to hold that… human beings have in addition to their ordinary properties and relations another special relation to certain actions. The relation is that of being “obligated” to perform those actions. And some of those actions are pretty clear that they will yield only Russellian losses to the one who performs them.”

In the actual world persons who do NOT perform them are considered “defective in some serious and important way and an adverse judgment is appropriate against them. And that certainly does seem odd” [if the world is as Russell says it is].

Monday, April 07, 2025

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

(I'm posting this to keep it in play. Available at amazon.com.)

Progressive Christianity is an ethos, a mind set, more than a movement. It is indebted to political progressivism and postmodern philosophy. It has a trajectory, which is secularism. In Deconstructing Progressive Christianity John Piippo explains this ethos, with its corresponding trajectory. He explains the differences between historic Christianity and progressive Christianity, and finds the latter to be a different kind of religion. In the process of deconstruction we see key missing elements, such as atonement theory, the resurrection of Christ, and non-natural realities. The idea of moral and spiritual human progress is seen as a myth, and progressive beliefs about love are examined. In this book you will come to better understand the progressive ethos as it relates to religion, and why progressive Christianity is best understood as distant from historic Christianity.

Sunday, April 06, 2025

The Importance of Remembering in Maintaining Hope

(Our downstairs office)

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,
for he who promised is faithful.

Hebrews 10:23

In this difficult time of moral mentorlessness, political chaos, and the "soma" of show business, what is needed is hope.

Hope: the mood of expectation that comes from a promise that something good is going to happen.

When I hope, I expect. "Expectation" is the mood that characterizes hope. Hope is expectation, based on a promise that has been given.

It seems that every day Linda and I meet someone who has lost hope. Loss of hope produces stagnancy and passivity. And depression. The loss of hope threatens life.

How important is hope? Lewis Smedes writes:

“There is nothing more important in this whole world than keeping hope alive in the human spirit. I am convinced that hope is so close to the core of all that makes us human that when we lose hope we lose something of our very selves. And in the process we lose all reason for striving for the better life we were meant to live, the better world that was meant to be. Let me put it as baldly as I can: there is nothing, repeat nothing, more critical for any one of us, young or old or anywhere in between, than the vitality of our hope.” (Smedes, Keeping Hope Alive: For a Tomorrow We Cannot Control, p. 6)

Real hope leads to activity, because it is attached to a promise that fuels the sense of expectation. The hope-filled, expectant person prepares for the promised, coming event.

A husband and wife are said to be "expecting" when she is pregnant with their inborn child. The reality of this hope is seen in their active preparation for the promised one to arrive. They create a space in their home for the newborn to dwell. They buy clothes and toys. They think and dream and pray. Hope, grounded in a promise of something good, is joy-filled.

Hope is different than "wishing." "Wishing" is not attached to a promise, and hence is devoid of the sense of expectation. The wishing person is inactive. The person who wishes to win the gazillion-dollar lottery does not quit their job and sell their house. When no promise is given, passivity reigns.

How can I overcome hopelessness and begin to hope again? I remember.

"Remembering " plays a role in "hoping." My spiritual journal, which is a record of God's activity in my life, helps me to remember. My journal includes God's promises to me, and promises realized. I have many stories where things looked hopeless, and then life returned. When I re-read and re-meditate on my journals, I am filled with hope. I remember the deeds of the Lord in my life. I come to know God, in whom I have placed my trust, and makes good on his promises. I am then in a good spiritual place. It affects how I look at the unseen future. I see that "he who promised is faithful."

I am intentional about remembering. This includes carrying lists of God's blessings to me, and looking at them often. I have found that a hoping person...

...remembers the deeds of God in their life;

...remembers God-promises given, and God-promises fulfilled;

...makes God their trust today, and each day;

...dwells on the promises of God in Scripture;

...listens for God's voice, and his promises;

...is expectant;

...is active, since real hope always leads to present vitality.

I encourage a hopeless person to list, and thereby remember, the deeds of the Lord in their life. Write down ways God has been faithful to them. I have seen this result in a refocusing and re-membering of the person, as the members of their heart are put together again.

Another antidote for hopelessness is connectedness to the Jesus-community. Hopelessness isolates people; unattended-to isolation breeds hopelessness. Be intentional about being part of a small group. Be intentional about gathering with others on Sunday mornings. Many times I have come on a Sunday morning, holding on to some fear in my heart, only to find it lifted and removed as we meet with the Lord together.