Editor's Note
This Lausanne Occasional Paper is accompanied by a video introduction from the author, offering insights into the key themes and context of the paper. It is part of the Theological Foundation Papers collection, which provides a biblical and theological framework for key questions and trends from the State of the Great Commission Report .
In Human, All Too Human, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asserted, “In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.”1 Hope is delusional, he argued, because it keeps us from living and striving in the real world. Instead of accepting reality as it is, we escape into a dream world of wish-fulfillment. There is a sort of wisdom in this sentiment if we assume the definition of hope that most people share.
It is generally assumed that hope is a blind leap, something we can work up to somehow secure what we desire by a sheer act of will. Many people think of hope as wishful thinking. In the Disney classic, Pinocchio, “Jiminy Cricket” sings,
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you
are Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.2
But this can be a cruel delusion for a child, can’t it? What happens when it doesn’t work? It certainly does make a difference who you are, privileged or marginalized, and there is no correlation between hoping for something and receiving it. And stars are beautiful, but we have no reason to believe there’s any point wishing on them when the God who made them is the only source and fulfillment of our existence.
Hope, like faith and love, is not something that one can simply work up on command. It would be cruel to advise someone with a life-threatening illness that the outcome depends on their faith. Instead, we pray for a good doctor and check the physician’s credentials carefully. In any situation, our hope rises or falls depending on the object and the power and will of that object to make it happen.
Even Christians can drift into assuming that hoping in the Lord is like wishing upon a star. Hope is seen as the opposite of reasonable conviction.The object makes little difference; what matters is that you keep a positive attitude. If Jesus helps with that, terrific, but it is widely believed that hope by definition is merely a subjective act without requiring a reasonable object.This is precisely the sort of “hope” that Nietzsche’s statement censures. After all, he did not believe there was an object of hope, namely God, so he concludes that hope is wishing upon a star.
In sharp contrast, the biblical God invites people to evaluate his credentials. Actually, it would be a lack of trust in fact to refuse a sign when God gives it, as in the case of Ahaz and the evidence of a future Messiah born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; ESV). “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he” (Isa. 41:4; ESV). Why trust in idols our own imagination and hands have made—images that cannot even speak—much less fulfill their promises?
Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it (Isa. 46:8-11; ESV).
The whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is an unfolding drama of promise and fulfillment centering on Christ. In Genesis 15, we find Abram still doubting that God will provide an heir—until God proclaims his promise. Faith did not create the promise but vice versa. It is God’s preaching of the promise into doubting Abram that created faith. God assumed all the responsibilities for carrying it out, while Abram was asleep!
It is easier to take matters into our own hands, as Abram in fact did by having a child with Hagar. But instead of securing what we hope for, we just create more problems. Hope can be another form of works-righteousness: If I just hope enough, it will come true. But throughout the history of God’s people, hope is seen as a reasonable response to the evidence God provides. The Apostle Paul explains that Abraham was justified through faith in God’s promise, not by anything in him or done by him (Rom. 4:1-8). “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all…” (Rom. 4:16; ESV).
Abraham had far less evidence to go on than we do. He could not have known beforehand that God would provide a substitute in the place of Isaac when he brought his promised heir to the mountain of sacrifice. Much less could he have foreseen that it would be on that same mountain in the distant future where the greater Isaac would be sacrificed for the sins of the world.
Today, we have the evidence of all evidence: the resurrection of our Savior. The risen Jesus did not find his disciples in a state of hope but in disillusionment and despair. Peter and the others did not believe the women who first brought the report of his empty tomb. Appearing in the upper room, Jesus showed the disciples his hands and side. “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you’” (John 20:21; ESV). “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive” (Acts. 1:3; NIV).
Because it is a historical fact, it is not dreaming, wishing, or imagining. In fact, it would appear from Nietzsche’s own testimony for rejecting Christ that he was trying to wish away the facts. Christ is risen, bodily, whether we hope or not, a little or a lot. And it is the proclamation of that good news that creates and sustains our hope.
When Jesus found two dejected disciples on the road to Emmaus, he explained to them how everything had to unfold as it did: first the cross, then glory. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27; ESV). It is striking that Jesus did not perform a sign to turn their sorrow into joy. Even before he revealed his identity to them in the celebration of Communion, Jesus aroused their hope by showing how everything in the Old Testament pointed to him. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32; ESV). If there was no greater confirmation for turning sorrow to hope than this even when the risen Jesus walked with his disciples, we should rejoice that we still have this miraculous word of Christ, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” (Rom. 1:16; ESV).
We are not called to an irrational or groundless hope but to a Triune God who delivers on his promises. Societies have tried to find hope in families, ancestors, sex, individual or collective achievement, economic and political systems, health care, technology, and science. But these good gifts of God, when made idols, demand their sacrificial offerings. Raising our hopes, at best, they over-promise and under-deliver; at worst, they claim untold lives in brutal violence. Their historical track record hardly justifies the hope that we place in them.
In contrast, we can check God’s credentials and find him worthy of our hope. We can testify to this hope in Christ to others not by directing them to our subjective experience or the intensity of our hope but to the object of our hope, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15; ESV). The word for defense here, apologia, was used of lawyers presenting a case in court.
Unlike a useful illusion, such hope is an awakening to sanity from the trivial idols we have fashioned, from the materials of political and economic ideologies, cultural identities, sex, and (above all), from our own selfish autonomy. Far from being blind optimism, the gospel is stark realism. And because it looks to the only good, wise, and sovereign God, known in Jesus Christ, it is a hope that gives us life instead of destroying it.
Finally, on the basis of the promises God has already fulfilled, we can wait patiently for the final installment. We bring our petitions to God for our daily bread and all the temporal needs we have, interceding for our brothers and sisters for the same. Yet we have no promise of health, wealth, and happiness in this age. But we do have the promise that we have been chosen by God, accepted in the Beloved, redeemed, regenerated, sealed with his Spirit, and justified (Eph. 1:4-13; Rom. 8:29-30).
People around the world today are craving justice. If we watch the news, we might despair. But we know already that God is justifying the ungodly by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone. People around the world are craving acceptance. We check our social media feeds for affirmation, seeking “followers” and “likes,” and editing our profiles to justify ourselves before others. But we know we are accepted already in Christ. People are craving glory—health, wealth, and happiness. But we already possess “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” in Christ (Eph. 1:3; ESV), guaranteeing that we will share in Christ’s glory both in body and soul forever.
Our hope for the future is always based on the evidence of what we already have in the present. Christ has been raised.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom. 5:1-5; ESV).
And one day, we will not hope anymore, for faith will become sight and all that will be left is love (1 Cor. 13:8-13).
In between, we groan—along with the Holy Spirit—for the final installment of our inheritance. It is a groaning borne not of despair, wishful thinking, or a lack of God’s good gifts. On the contrary, it is precisely these gifts we possess now that tantalize us for the “more” up ahead, when the whole creation will share in the glory of God’s children.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom. 8:18-25; ESV).
Endnotes
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1996), “Section 2: On the History of Modern Feelings,” Aphorism 71, page 55.
- Quoted in Kaufman, Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic (San Rafael, CA: Weldon Owen, 2015), 124. In the public domain, the song was written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington.