Virtues of Character

Hope

By hope we live in the confidence and desire of possessing Him. As faith is about listening to God, hope is about carrying out what He says, even in the face of challenges. The Christian hopes for the beatific vision, for face to face union with God, for ‘blessedness’ as the true end of man’s existence. This is not to be kept for oneself, but to be commended and shared with all. Through faith, Christians know that Christ has conquered death and that He will be true to His Word written in the Scriptures and on the lives of his faithful followers. Christians hope for nothing short of God himself and the hope that God will supply them with the means to reach Him. Whereas faith requires a strong will, hope keeps us going to the end, even in the face of heavy weather. Trust is the essence of hope.

The basis of this hope is God’s power and mercy, which have been revealed indirectly in creation and directly in His Son, Jesus: ‘for God, all things are possible’. To hope is an act of free choice – we hope for what we do not see except by faith – perfect union with the Father. Hope is thus rooted in faith – if we lose faith, we lose hope; we become, literally, hopeless. Or we put our hopes in lesser goods – other gods, other things, or even ourselves. Without faith, one cannot have reason to hope.

This loss of hope can reveal itself in a distaste for prayer and in a life of wealth, status, power, sex, drugs, fame and adulation. False hopes reveal themselves in a cocksureness and flippancy, a glibness, an ‘I’m alright, Jack’ attitude. There is much of this today – the hope to save ourselves or that God will save us regardless of our faith no matter how we live, or whether we have truly opened up to Him. Not being what we’re meant to be, in particular, uproots both faith and hope. For, ‘in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.”

Hope is faith projected into the future, the acceptance of the promise of happiness. Because of faith Christians are able to live in hope that despite all the bad and limiting conditions of this life, they will be able to share in fulfilment through a faithful relationship to God. Without God, there is no hope – there is only death that awaits us all, and nothing more; no judgement, no balancing out, no redressing of injustices received at the hands of others – just death. Oh, yes, we might have left a legacy of good deeds, but we might also have just as easily left a legacy of bad ones. Who cares, since we’re all dead in the end, anyway?

But we don’t really live like that. Whether religious or not, people do live in hope. But without God, what is there in our natural, bodily lives to justify such hope? If natural life tells us anything, it tells us that there is a tragic quality to human existence that we are of ourselves unable to overcome. It is shot through with the desire for fulfilment, but of itself it cannot satisfy that desire. Death stops all of these desires short, making life seem absurd. Moreover, life is vulnerable to ‘unnatural death’ – death at the hands of others. Natural life is incredibly vulnerable, weakening a capacity to live in hope. Through faith in Jesus, though, the Christian is set free from such anxieties – in the long run. This enables human growth and development.