Reasons to Hope

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:2-4)

          One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic is the idea that when the virus finally goes away, and lockdown is lifted, that all pollution will be gone, global warming will no longer be a factor, everything will be fresh and new and we can (apparently instantaneously) build this whole new world based on the principles of the song Imagine. 

          One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly whenever a white man kills a black man is that “This has got to stop!” If we would just pass a law, and then fundamentally transform the nation (again a la Imagine) everything would heal. Those whose folly runs in a slightly different direction take the approach that if white folks would just stop being the brutish, oppressive monsters that they always have been and bow to the superiority of the Black folks, everything would be heaven on earth.

         The idea seems to be that some event is going to take place, and everything that has been wrong before will be right. There’s always just this one little problem that stops us from having heaven on earth, namely – man. Oh, we might say it’s man’s greediness, or man’s will to power, or man’s lust, or man’s fear, or some other thing that comes forth from man, but it’s human nature in all it’s simple complexity or complex simplicity. The hatred we’ve seen on social media – whether personal toward Mr. Floyd or impersonal (AKA Racism) toward a Black man – is fallen human nature. It’s folly to think some event (like protests, riots, or even a change in the law) is going to make it go away.         

          And yet we hope, and I think that hope is a good thing. The problem isn’t the hope, it’s that the hope is in the wrong noun, which means its bound to disappoint. We are given reason to hope in today’s passage. There will come a Person, and a place, and a time, and conditions under which every tear will be wiped away. There will be no more deaths, no more sickness, no more sorrow. It’s going to happen! 

             But, what will bring it about is not man. Man is crippled by his human nature. We try. We put together systems. If all those other horrid people would just get with the program. In fact, once of the goals of the Progressive ideology is to create a society in which it is systemically impossible for people to do evil. We try so hard, and we fail. And we think that the solution is to try harder. But we cannot change ourselves from being what we are. 

          Yes, we try to do that, and if we pour a lot of time, will, and energy into the transformation, it works – for a time. But it has to be the focus of our lives for the rest of our lives. (Yes, there are some light-switch moments, but not as many as we’d like.) 

          This is what makes Christianity different. It’s not about what we can do. It’s not about our building heaven on earth. It’s about Jesus Christ bringing heaven to us. So there’s reason to hope, but not in the hope we wanted.