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Hope Often Looks Foolish

by James Barringer  
5/09/2010 / Christian Living

Has there ever been a time when a bunch of people laughed at you? Not at a joke you made or a gag you pulled, but at you personally? Do you remember the hot indignation that lit up your face, the frustration at the way everyone else knew something you didn't, even a twinge of pain as they mocked you?

You have some idea, then, what Jesus might have felt during the events recorded in Matthew 9:23-25. Jesus was summoned to the house of a man - Mark 5 identifies him as Jairus, a synagogue leader - whose daughter had just died. Jesus was delayed on the way because of all the people who were pressing in to be healed by him, and while he was still en route, some people came to tell him not to bother; the girl had already died. This didn't make any difference to Jesus, so he kept going to Jairus' house, where he announced to everybody that the girl wasn't dead after all - just asleep. And, Matthew says laconically, "They laughed at him."

I don't know how this made Jesus feel, because neither Matthew or Mark records, but you could take how you feel when people are laughing at you and multiply it by a zillion. It's embarrassing when people laugh at you because they know something you don't. How frustrated must Jesus have felt, having them laugh at him because they thought they knew something he didn't, when really they were the ones who were completely wrong? I bet they started laughing even harder when he wandered over to the table and told her to get up - "Now he's really lost it; he's talking to her." But the last laugh, of course, went to Jesus, when he told her to get up and she actually did. I like to imagine that the room went utterly silent at that point except for the sound of a few dozen minds being blown.

See, hope often looks foolish. Christianity is built, from start to finish, around the idea that the impossible happens. There was a God, who has existed eternally - nothing made him. Also, he's actually three persons in one God, one God who lives in tri-unity within himself. He also began with only himself and built an entire universe from scratch. If you have a very weak appetite for things you can't understand, you may be feeling queasy right now. Don't worry - that's totally natural for a human mind in the process of realizing how finite it is.

Jesus' hope was founded on the idea that people's five senses don't tell the whole story, that there is a spiritual reality underpinning what we can see, and that this spiritual reality is inhabited by a good God who loves humanity and is working in all things for our good. Even when things look dire, we can rest in the knowledge that God is still in control and that, even if this life isn't all we hoped it would be, there is a joyful eternity waiting for us. In short, we have something to hope in.

This also means that we have something not to hope in, which is our circumstances. This, if we're really honest about it, is what most of us actually look at when determining whether to have a good or bad attitude. If things are going well in my life, I can relax and enjoy peace. If things are going poorly, we frequently fall back on worry and attempting to remain in control. The message of Jesus - this man already well acquainted with the impossible - is not to trust your eyes, because they don't tell the whole story. "In this life, he will have troubles," he tells us in John 16; he knows there will be times that challenge your faith and force you to hope in what you can't see. "But take heart," he continues, "I have overcome the world." Our hope is built around a reality beyond the visible.

And we know that it is reality. People are built to run on hope. In the concentration camps of World War 2, many inmates died long before their bodies gave out, simply from lack of hope. By contrast, scientific evidence has shown that hospital patients who know they are prayed for recover up to 40% faster. How much of this is God healing them quicker and how much is the impact of hope, I don't know for sure, but 40% is a huge number. Among people who commit suicide, mental illness and substance abuse are the two leading reasons, but third place could be broadly summed up as "the loss of hope" - financial problems, family issues, social ostracism, or general anxiety. Hope is crucial, not just for happiness, but for the courage to face tomorrow. This means, logically, that there must be something in the universe to hope in. C.S. Lewis observed that cravings do not exist unless the fulfillment exists. "A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A man feels sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex." If a man feels a need for hope, there must be something logical and reasonable to hope in, or else we would not know what the craving meant. The "something logical and reasonable" is the only thing in the universe strong enough to guarantee that hope is never unfounded: I am talking, of course, about God.

This is common knowledge, but there are many people who are in the awkward position of not knowing the Christian God yet still needing hope. Many people who use the word "hope" nowadays actually do not hope in anything. Their hope is merely a vague and unfounded craving - with no logical foundation - for things to, somehow and some way, get better. However, they have no reason for believing that this should be the case. There is nothing in life to suggest it will ever happen. They cling to this irrational hope, because they need to, even though their belief system allows no room for it. Christian hope may look like foolishness, but unfounded hope actually is foolishness, a willful self-delusion. That doesn't stop many these days from practicing it, so we need to be aware of what people mean when they say "hope," and be ready to challenge them if they're actually hoping in nothing, because we can provide the missing ingredient that would make their hope logical.

In a faith built around the impossible, hope seems to be the greatest impossbility of all: to reject the seemingly unrejectable evidence of circumstances, to dispute that our eyes tell us the only truth about the world. When things are going terribly for us, we have not just the ability but the obligation to ignore the "facts" and pull our hope from the knowledge that there is a spiritual reality beyond the limitations of our senses. What we can see and touch only provides us a partial picture. The craving of our inner beings for hope shows the rest of the picture. When that thing inside us reaches out desperately seeking something to hope in, it takes the first step toward a God who invites us into a relationship with him, an invitation to believe the impossible and shatter the dictatorship of the five senses. Do you have the strength to live that kind of hope, especially when it looks like foolishness? God is inviting you even now.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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