Some (In Progress) Thoughts on Hope

So I don’t know exactly how this is going to come out other than an unorganized stream of consciousness that is far from being resolved or even understandable, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past couple of years, especially over the past few months where I've been forced to look at it in a different lens.

Let’s start here: I’m a Christian, which is a huge part of my life, and trying to figure out how my faith shapes my views, interactions, and motives is something that is constantly in the foreground of my thoughts. What I’ll add is that I’m learning the art of nuance and gray areas, but for most of my life, I’ve ebbed and flowed between extremes on most things in my life, including my faith. When I was younger in my faith, I very much thought that if you simply believed and trusted in God, you would/should be fine, whatever "fine" meant. God was enough and to complain or not be happy about life was on you. I very ungraciously responded to friends’ issues with, “Why is that a big deal? You have God, what else do you need?” Tactful, right?

And like many of the lessons in my life, I was only able to see my ugliness when I was on the other side of the equation. When I went through my own painful situations that didn’t make any sense and weren’t easily gotten over, hearing “just pray” or “that’s not a big deal” or “get over it” didn’t help me feel closer to God. It just made me feel that God was only in the ether in the form of buzzwords and platitudes. He was there in the sense that God is always there, but if I needed to actually resolve anything, it was through other practical means, not God.

And again going back to my love of extremes, I went from believing that as long as you did the right things and trusted in God you’d be fine, to believing that even though God loves people, fluffy talk was cheap and there were other ways I needed to practically help people (and myself) than simply saying “just trust God” “or “God is enough” or “pray.”

Which brings me to 2015, and the little real hope I put in God.

My life was very much driven by my faith, but it was skewed heavily more toward how God wanted to use me practically to help, rather than believing God could truly redeem dire situations. A lot of my friends can testify to the fact that I’ve asked them repeatedly over the past year about what it looks like to “thrive” in your life, and could you really use that word if all you knew was pain, abandonment, and loneliness? Could someone honestly say that even though none of their deep longings were met, or that they went through some indescribably painful trauma that colored everything in their life, that as long as they had God in their life, they would “thrive?” I was skeptical. My view of God continued to be very small.

The last person I wanted to be was someone who looked at another person who had brokenness in their life and very real needs like housing or food or counseling, and simply say “God loves you!” and walk away. How does someone who has felt nothing but pain, hear “God loves you?” It seemed like a slap in the face. “I know you need food and clothes, but what I’m going to offer you is some nice words of God’s love and not a whole lot else.” If I heard that, it would probably only trigger the thought, “With friends like that…”

So how did I respond? By being a doer. I volunteered at a lot of places, and was always really intentional about making sure I wasn’t just saying nice words, but was doing something that could practically help someone. Clothing drives, handing out food and blankets, fundraising for projects. And a lot of that drove me to want to come to Cambodia and see how I could be a practical help to young girls who have only known having their trust broken by the people that are closest to them. They’ve gone through trauma no one should ever go through, let alone children in elementary school. So I wanted to help in ways I thought would make a difference.

I’m going to take a quick sidebar and share three things that are (trust me) a part of this inner dialogue of mine – two from comedians I love, and one from my wonderful pastor (emphasis mine):

Norm Macdonald: “I used to give homeless people food, because I didn’t want them to use the money I gave them for drugs. But if I was in their situation and homeless, all I would want is drugs, too. You think with their life, an extra sandwich is going to make a difference?”

Louis CK: “It means they were bad, and now they’re---I mean they’re better. They’re not good. Life is shit wall to wall.”

Pastor Brenda Salter McNeil: “So Paul believes that this world is not the end of the story…Paul says I want to know God. I want to know who God is. I want to know what God is doing. Paul says I’ve come to know that this world is not the end of the story. There is a future state, a kingdom of shalom that’s coming. Paul says I’ve gotten so close to the heartbeat of God, I know that this world grieves God, too. Massacres in Paris and terrorism on campus make God cry. And that’s why God has told us that this is not the end of the story. There’s another story, greater, bigger, worth living for. Something that transcends our physical reality, and it’s called HEAVEN! Paul says I want to go, I gotta go, to this place that God says is the end of war, and the end of death, and the end of sickness and disease, where reconciliation, healing, and peace, and justice reign…and there is harmony, and there is peace. And all creation flourishes. What a vision, what an image.

“Now the truth be told, those of us who are really, really educated, and haven’t suffered much, heaven sounds like a pie in the sky theology, doesn’t it? Go ahead and tell the truth, it does. That’s why you’re kind of looking at me like that – ‘Heaven, really, I haven’t thought about heaven.’ Well let me tell you something. Folks who suffer, who have been through hell on earth, they believe in heaven. Because they know that they can’t trust that this world is it. They can’t believe the hell they’re experiencing on earth, is the end of the story.”

I think you can see what I'm getting at with these quotes: for some, life doesn’t provide much of anything other than pain and loneliness, and for these people, God and the promise of a redeemed story after this life is the only thing they’re holding out hope for.

I stayed away from my initial belief in God being enough because I though there should be action along with words of God’s love. And I still think that’s right. But in the process, I yoyo’d so far to the other side that I reduced God’s hand in things because I was one of those “educated people” who hasn’t suffered much and didn’t see the true need of God’s healing and promise that there’s more to life than this. The “this” in my life was pretty good and comfortable, so I just wanted to help people get some of that “this” in their own lives.

First, who’s to say what I have is what we really need and all it’s cracked up to be? I know there’s more to life than comfort and security, but those nice things make it easy to forget there’s more that we long for and need. As they say, good is the enemy of great.

Secondly, do I really think that teaching English and ukulele for 6 months is going to help a girl get over her trauma? I heard a story of a girl being raped by her grandfather and having to get an abortion. Another story I heard was that a doctor who was helping one of the girls’ mothers, ended up raping the daughter. The mother didn’t believe her daughter’s accusation. For some people, life is a series of pain, abandonment, and loneliness, and I think I can change that by volunteering for a little bit? And think about this: the BEST CASE scenario in terms of support for some girls who have been abused or trafficked is that they find their way to one of the NGOs that provides counseling and support for 6 months to a few years, then they go back to their families and communities where there isn’t a promise of any continued professional help or really any acknowledgment that her trauma will continue to impact her life; it’s just supposed to be a return to "normal."

(A couple of clarifying notes: 

1. One thing I want to make sure comes across clearly is that the work that many people do to alleviate social justice issues and trauma such as sex trafficking is crucial and makes a huge difference. I'm not disputing that all, which is why I'm still trying to involved practically. I just needed to remind myself that these interventions have their limits and many times they’re not enough.
2. I also want to make clear that I'm not saying that just because someone has painful trauma in their life, it means they're relegated to a life that is just constant pain. A friend reminded me recently that suffering and joy are closely related and I know of people who have overcome trauma and have thrived in spite of the trauma, and sometimes partially because of it. But while acknowledging that many people emerge from these situations with resolution, perspective, and understanding, there are many who don't.)

I went to a conference a couple months back that was the gathering of many of the human trafficking orgs in Cambodia. Once thing that quickly stuck out to me was how many orgs had the word “hope” in it: Heart of Hope, Hope for Justice, and Garden of Hope to name a few. And the more I’ve heard the stories of sexual abuse, the more that word is the only one that makes sense to me.

So what does all that mean? For me, I think it helps remind me that my faith not only asks me to help people practically and provide some hope in this life, which in many cases is incomplete, but it also pushes me back toward my earlier mindset that God really is the only thing we can put our full hope in that there will be healing and redemption. Helping on the ground plays an important role and the practical healing process is necessary, but no matter how much people care or try, sometimes it’s not enough to overcome some really messed up situations. The more I help, the more I see that the help we as people can provide is limited. There are enough examples of stories that do not resolve and they’re not due to the lack of effort or having the right programs in place. What else can we do than everything we can do? That’s where we’re left – with no more answers and only the hope that God has more to the story, even if that resolution seems distant or impossible or too supernatural or just a fluffy fairytale.

There are a lot of reasons why I am a Christian, and all of them are very real to me. In some ways, my life circumstances have pushed me toward this faith, and in many ways I've been very intentional about my path. But if all those reasons fell to the wayside, and I couldn't rest on being "devout", or "faithful", or "disciplined", what other choice would I have than to believe in this hope? That this life is all we have, and for some, it’s just going to be shit wall-to-wall? If I'm being completely honest, a lot of my faith isn't because I'm so thoughtful and holy and chose it as my first and only love. It's because I've tried everything else, and that's all there's left for me to hang onto. 

I asked earlier “How does someone who has felt nothing but pain, hear ‘God loves you?’” and could easily see why they would be insulted to hear that claim given their circumstances. But what I’ve realized is that the people who hear “God loves you” the most acutely are those who have nothing else in this world to hope for apart from that promise.

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” - Revelations 21:4