In “Why Is It So Hard to Talk About God?” a New York Times interview with Krista Tippett, host of On Being, she said this:
We live in an extraordinary moment. It is one of seismic change. That can be beautiful and fascinating but also so difficult. We are redefining basic things like marriage, family and gender. That is huge. On top of that, we have an ecological crisis, a political fracture, a racial reckoning. We have broken health care systems and economies. We had a pandemic that threw our nervous systems into distress for three years. We have a lot of energy that masquerades as something else that is really human beings in despair.
This is a human condition crisis. And that is actually what religious traditions are intelligent about.
When we are in the midst of such seismic cultural, political, and legal change, we need a hope that is built on a strong foundation if we are not to lose heart. The sense of doom in the news is not hard to find. In fact, it seems addictive, drawing us to it regardless of our worldview. Consider how the Trump Administration is charging and deporting people without due process. Due process is a right rooted in our humanity. We are human beings, with inherent dignity and value, and so we have the right to answer accusations against us. The loss of due process even in a few isolated cases is a threat to us all.
Another measure of the challenge to democracy occurs when the values of freedom and democracy are diminished or left unsupported. Such as when PresidentTrump takes Russia’s side against Ukraine, demonstrating America is no longer a dependable ally for those yearning and fighting for democracy and freedom. I pray for our President every day, and find his push toward authoritarianism unsurprising, given what he has argued for, but very sad.
Of course, all philosophies and ideologies offer hope of some sort. The question is, of course, whether the hope on offer is strong enough to really matter in hard times. Most don’t, I believe. The one possibility that speaks with a stable foundation for hope is the Gospel of the Risen Christ. The resurrection is a historical fact, attested to by multiple dependable witnesses, and his resurrection is the reason we can have hope for the future.
This is why the Medieval English mystic and anchoress, Julian of Norwich could state, “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” Do you hear that? Really hear it? Do you believe it? Or do you dismiss it as the semi-irrational mumblings of a mystic out of touch with reality.?
It is easy to underestimate what the promise of the New Creation means in Scripture. Just as the resurrection is beyond our feeble and limited minds to grasp, so God’s final restoration of his glorious but now ruined creation is beyond our imaginations. The late Rev. Dr. Tim Keller said, “Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.”
Hold onto that, dear fellow follower of Jesus. Receive this hope with open hands, hearts, minds, and imaginations. Hold onto it amid all the lies and misinformation swirling around us, all the fearsome acts and statements from an increasingly authoritarian Administration, and all the hard things that intrude into our lives. Hold onto it. And every time you imagine you know what it might be like, realize you really don’t have much of a clue. It’ll be far better than all you imagine. As far as the distance between a living King and a dead corpse.
The hope we hold as followers of Jesus is not the cosmic equivalent of a quick paint job. It’s a New Creation, a redeemed, renewed earth, cosmos, and heaven. The Kingdom of God, in which new creations in Christ live forever, world without end.
Photo credit: Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash
