by Berry Friesen (April 6, 2015)
During a recent group discussion, someone asked: “Why are we
Christians so pessimistic? Shouldn’t we of
all people be filled with hope?”
The questioner wasn’t one of those Christians who expect
Earth to be destroyed at God’s command.
Instead, he is a Christian grounded in the understanding that God loves
the world and means to save it (John 3:16-17).
So his questions are very important. This post will not do them justice, but it is
a start.
First, the case for
pessimism.
1. Jesus insisted that the salvation of which he spoke was
historical. His first followers were not
idealists, pointing to some other state of being yet to come; they claimed Jesus had
changed the direction in which history was unfolding on Earth. Their
expectations are a matter of record; we read about them in the Bible.
2. Countless preachers have schooled us to accept the view
that while Jesus’ first followers expected Jesus to return bodily to Earth
during their lifetimes to complete what he had started, in fact this did not
happen. Thus, the way the world works today is no different from when Jesus
lived and died; little has really changed.
3. The world’s current trajectory is unsustainable and
headed for disaster.
Due to cultural and economic decline, the USA is losing its
position of world leadership.
Nevertheless, it maintains control through the use of violence and
supremacy in surveillance, military capacity and media propaganda. The moral cynicism beneath US policies is much
worse than we had imagined, giving us every reason to expect the violence to
only increase in the years ahead.
To avoid catastrophic warming and climate change, we must
leave nearly all of remaining carbon-based fuels in the ground. Yet we remain highly dependent on fossil
fuels and eager to develop reserves. Our
economic system seems incapable of making the adjustments required if we want to avoid the ecological threat.
Meanwhile, the world’s financial elite have turned away from communal understandings
of justice and security. Instead, they
use their immense wealth to subvert political institutions for private
purposes.
Next, the case for hope.
1. YHWH, the god of
Moses, Elijah and Jesus, opposes empires.
YHWH brings them down, reducing them to nothing. From Genesis
to Revelation, the witness of the
Bible is that YHWH will not permit evil to become entrenched. Thus, we can be
sure the current US-led empire and its assumptions, all of which seem so impervious to change,
will collapse before dooming Earth.
Radical change is coming, probably not in my lifetime, but perhaps in
yours and certainly within the lifetimes of coming generations.
2. The prophetic
vision of a sustainable, just and decentralized society—illuminated and
enlarged by Jesus’ witness of compassion, forgiveness and nonviolent resistance
to evil—is the light of the world. One
way we know this to be true is the frequency with which it is honored in the
speech of political leaders who believe the opposite. Barack Obama (for example) is so effective
because he is so well-versed in the prophetic vision and pays it homage so
eloquently. Yet even his cynical use of
that vision cannot quench its power.
At the center of our faith is the belief that YHWH has made
Jesus the standard by which all the world is measured. When we pay attention to public rhetoric, we
can hear that this is so.
3. If YHWH opposes
the existing imperial system, and if history has borne out the Christian claim
that the witness of Jesus is a light that will never be extinguished, then we
can be confident that new opportunities for a good society rooted in Jesus and
the prophetic tradition lie ahead.
Again, these opportunities may not fully flower in my lifetime or even
yours, but we expect this to happen within the lifetimes of coming generations.
It is for that day we live and
work today.
