Is there any hope?

Hope is the confidence that a positive outcome will occur. The reason many are hopeless today is that they see no reason to expect a good outcome in the world in which we live. I’m not going to list all the horrors that we may fear – I think we know them all too well. The question is rather, how can we have any hope that things in the future will be better than the present?

The difficulty is that human nature does not essentially change. We will always be that mixture of good and evil. If good people prevail in government, peace and prosperity might come; if evil people rule, we may suffer the opposite. And when you study history, you may well conclude that there is little hope that life will be peaceful and things will go better.

Some trust in the advances of science, and we must be thankful for every progress in the field of medicine, in particular, that will improve our well-being. But still we will all face death. Others look to Artificial intelligence (AI) with great expectations, while many fear what such “intelligence” may do. It all depends on who wields and guides that AI – for good or for evil. And as the very notions of good and evil are disputed and twisted, the future still looks bleak.  

These blog posts deal with “authentic hope”: how can hope be authentic? When we wonder who can tell what the future holds, the answer is – only one person: God. He is not bound by time, as we are: he is eternal. He sees the end already. He knows where everything is headed, and indeed, he has the almighty power necessary to ensure that his ultimate good purposes will be fulfilled. As he is Lord over all creation, he alone can give us authentic hope for the future (as well as true hope for answers to our existential questions). He, and he alone, knows the future. In fact he holds the future in his hands. 

The Bible speaks a lot about hope. There’s a text in the Bible that speaks of people “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2.12). If God alone can hold out hope for our future, then those without God are without any solidly grounded hope.

Not many people realise that God has unveiled the future of our human existence. The greatest element in the biblical hope is that the world will end with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and glory. “He will come to judge the living and the dead”: that phrase of the Christian creed sums up what lies ultimately ahead of us all. No evil-doer can escape the final judgment of God. If there was no ultimate reckoning, then all justice is meaningless. But God has inscribed the presentiment of just judgment in the conscience of every human being. This serves to prevent many horrible crimes and atrocities, but those who bypass the restraints of conscience should realise that they will nevertheless face ultimate judgment.

Now this, of course, for all of us, is not exactly joyous hope! We would not like a God of absolute holiness to examine the details of our lives and administer justice according to our misdeeds. While that is not “good news”, there is wonderful good news in the message of the Gospel of Christ. Through faith in our Lord and Saviour, we may be absolutely delivered from the condemnation due to us on that judgment day. This good news gives real hope, as I will share further. 

Clive Every-Clayton