Despair and Hope at Odds

I like to think of myself as someone who understands politics. Or at least I thought I did. I have a long history with politics – from it being all consuming (that wasn’t healthy), to hating it (not healthy either), to making some sort of peace with it, to trying to ignore it, to being concerned about the people in it. It seems that for many people politics has taken the place that religion once had in their lives. Religion offers a sense of identity, meaning, purpose. There are origin stories and sacredness. There is a call to follow. There are things that are taught and learned. There are ways to see people. There are sins and blessings.

But for several years now so much of these very things seems to be played out in the realm of politics – usually not in a healthy way.

I’m also a student of history. And because of that, I also recognize that what I’m observing isn’t anything new. Politics has used and abused religion probably more often than not. Religion and politics are more alike than we often like to admit. I’m fond of saying that religion and politics are really the same thing – a study of people and a presentation of a possible future, grounded in identity, belonging, and meaning making. This seems to be just another time in history in which politics is using religion’s core for its own purposes. I don’t mean that in terms of institutions either. I’m talking about something much deeper – power, control, ideas, etc. Religion is unhealthy and destructive when its primary concerns are about order and control and power.

In conversations with people recently, I’ve realized something. There seems to be an air of despair or inevitability. A type of ominous hopelessness in the air. As if anything that we do to try to change anything is pointless. It seems like no one is willing to listen, so why bother saying anything. It seems like no one is open to considering an alternative, so why bother presenting one. It seems like certain results are going to happen, so why bother paying attention.

This is different than the idea that people don’t like change. Regardless, I think that idea is false. People don’t like to feel like they aren’t in charge or control of the change. They willingly change in a heartbeat if they can control it and see benefit to it.

I don’t know if all of this goes together or not – the idea of the human desire to be in control, while feeling despair for not being in control. I’m sure there is a better way to say it, but that’s how I can word it right now.

The reality is we have never been in control. We never will be. Control is just a nice story we tell ourselves. Think about the immensity of the universe. We individual humans aren’t even a speck in comparison. Most of what happens is beyond our control or even influence. Yet, we tell ourselves that we are in control of our lives. People believe they are in control of their lives every day, then get into their car and die in a car accident that they didn’t know killed them. People believe they are in control of their lives and end up being at the wrong place at the wrong time – if they had been one second earlier or later, the situation would have been different. People believe they are in control of their lives, but the reality points to a different story that we don’t want to hear. We’d much rather have our fantasy world of control. We think it protects something about ourselves. But all it does is blind us to life.

In religious faith we are told over and over again to deny ourselves, or to die to self. What is it that we hear in that message? Do we really grasp what that means? Ultimately the concept of dying to self is about letting the desire to be in control die. It’s accepting the reality that we are not in control. It’s only in accepting this that we can then be open to transformation and what a better possible future entails. And that’s something that politics can never offer because more often than not, it’s too short sighted – in a constant election cycle, unable to see past Election Day. This creates an environment in which we feel so out of control and hopeless because we are actually in political poverty where the only time that really exists is now. We are incapable of seeing a possible future well beyond Election Day – any Election Day. When we exist in an endless election cycle, we are experiencing political hell, full of its own torment (if you want to follow Dante’s model). Or maybe it’s a political hell in the sense that there is an absence of anything holy, divine, hopeful. It lacks meaning and purpose. It’s the constant amping up of existential dread. It is exhausting and it is designed to be that way to elicit exactly what we experience – giving up so someone else can have control. And when we feel that we are alone, it’s much easier to fall for the trap and to just give up.

But faithful people aren’t called to give up. We claim to believe in life, death, and resurrection. Three essential parts. And they are a process. I think part of the challenge the church and that the faithful face is that we have forgotten some things or we fell into the trap of getting comfortable in a culture that made us feel special (while not really caring about what the faith was really about ultimately – it was just the price of giving us the false sense of control over our lives).

I think it’s a mistake for the church to push forward with the mission it has been given without some other essential parts. Pushing forward with the mission without these essential parts is like trying to drive a car without wheels. What are those parts? First, we need to mourn. We need to be intentional about this. The church is really good at funerals, but terrible at mourning. Our society is terrible at mourning. We avoid it at all costs. We avoid it for a variety of reasons. And because we avoid it, we stay stuck, lost, and hopeless.

Mourning is about recognizing that what was is no longer. It is also seeing that what we thought was is no longer either. This isn’t just an intellectual project. It’s a full body experience. Mourning in the church means mourning financial situations, property ownership and how it is used, organizational structure, educational methods and institutions, professionals employed by churches, full pews and churches, how music used to be, missions, how sermons are preached, committees, events, youth programs, families, volunteering, communication styles and methods, giving, service opportunities, why a congregation exist, how it relates to the community it is in, what it is called to do and be, and so much more. If we don’t take the time to mourn what was or what we want to believe what was, we resist the current reality that we are in. We are placing false hope in returning to something in the past (whether it actually was a certain way or not). It’s not even fair to say that we are living. We aren’t. We are stuck in a time loop of some time before the way that dementia patients believe they are experiencing events from their past.

Mourning is also nonjudgmental about the past. The past is what it was. But it is no longer, regardless of whether that past is fondly remembered or not. Mourning is a recognition that something has died and the situation has forever changed.

When Jesus goes to the tomb of Lazarus, we are told he weeps with the people. He’s there to raise Lazarus from the dead. He knows what he’s going to do, yet he weeps. Why? Because Jesus recognizes that raising Lazarus from the dead is not rewinding the clock. It’s not about returning things to the way they were. Lazarus died. Jesus mourns with the people because what was is no longer. When Lazarus is raised, it is something new. It is a blessing of life for Lazarus’ family and community that they hadn’t experienced before. And it is a threat to those in positions of authority – so much of a threat that there is a plot to kill the raised Lazarus because Jesus raising Lazarus is a threat to authority and the status quo.

Mourning helps us to see the blessings and the threats – who is blessed and who is threatened.

When we mourn, we move to the present. We can see more clearly what the situation is currently. We can take a breath. We can see where we have been and possibly see how we go to where we are. We can see the decisions that were not made and should have been. We can see the decisions that were made and should not have been. We can see the good decisions too. We can see the past more clearly.

And when we are more fully in the present, we can start to look towards the future – in the direction of where we are headed and where we are called to go. It is in this that we have hope. There is meaning and purpose because we are actually heading somewhere, not walking aimlessly. With a possible future, we feel alive. We see possibilities. We know that a current unhealthy present doesn’t make an unhealthy future inevitable. There is another way. And with knowing there is another way, we have options and choices.

And so my friends, I implore you – have hope. I’m not talking about empty optimism which ignores the reality of the present with its pains and challenges for a rainbow and rose future that sounds great. No, I’m talking about hope. It’s a different type of hope that you might not be familiar with. A hope grounded in not being in control, and at the same time knowing there is a path forward. A hope that is symbolized by a path forward that leads to a better, healthier, whole future. A hope that tells us that we are not alone, that there is something more than the endless cycle of despair, that there is something worthwhile ahead. A hope that invites us to participate. A hope that steers us. A hope that looks far beyond whatever will happen in the coming months. A hope that cannot be stopped.