Table of Contents
“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
Red, in Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Hope isn’t a dangerous thing, as Andy responds, “Hope is a good thing maybe even the best of things and good things never die.”
What is hope? Hope is keenly related to our mind’s power of future simulation. If you haven’t read that chapter, go back and read, “Future Simulation” now.
Let’s start with what “hope” is not. Hope is not a wish or a want. When your child comes to you and says, “I hope I get to go to Disney World for Christmas!”, they are not expressing true “hope”, they are expressing a wish or a want. When someone says, “I hope I win the lottery!”, they also are merely expressing a wish or a want.
A wish or a want is a desirable future outcome, but it is never based on situational circumstances or prediction knowledge that a legitimate future simulation would conclude is a legitimate positive outcome. It is wonderful to have dreams and aspirations, but if you aren’t working a plan to fill situational gaps, your dreams will never come true.
However, imagine you are on the road travelling home and Google Maps says you’ll arrive at your destination at 5pm. You trust the road; you trust the navigation app. Therefore, you have all the facts in place to predict a certain future– then you can call and tell your family, “I hope to see you at 5pm.” You could also say, “I will see you at 5pm,” but technically this is really expressing a commitment to see your family. Other slightly obtuse semantics apply when you say, “I should see you at 5pm.” Do a quick study of “could”, “would”, and “should/ought” for more details on that angle.
Hope is the cause for joy we experience when a positive future outcome seems likely.
The chapter on Future Simulation mentioned above contains an example of how our future simulators, when they run out of favorable outcomes, leave us hopeless. Let’s look at another example to help illustrate the point.
Another Hopeless Example
Shock Fact
Imagine you visit the doctor for a regular checkup and return for the results. During the consultation, the doctor informs you that your blood work came back with cancer markers specific to pancreatic cancer and you have only a short time to live.
Prior to that fateful moment, all the facts of your life’s situation, and the models of prediction, fed your future simulator and computed outcomes that included the hope for many years of a satisfying life to come. We can’t predict every input that affects our future, but for most people, even the worst situations we face don’t include a likelihood of imminent death. This one fact just readjusted your future radically.
If you’re like everyone else, you’ve got some checking to do. Before you accept this fate, you’re going to confirm the fact that emptied you of all hope and confirm the past medical experiences of others that makes your quick demise seem so likely.
Thus, the first question you are going to ask the doctor is, “How certain are you of this data?” A good doctor will happily agree to re-run the tests or even refer you to another doctor for a second opinion. We shouldn’t hastily accept facts into our future simulators that lead to such dire predictions. Feelings of denial must be acted upon. Being certain of the situational facts is a virtue. Blindly accepting situational facts is pure gullibility.
More blood tests, and even a second opinion, confirmed the presence of cancer.
Next you tackle the prognosis. What is the experience of other people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer? How many survive? How many die within a year? Is my case going to be average? Is it reasonable to use this past prediction data in my future simulation? Google searches and discussions with other experts confirm: people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer die, period. The only variable is how long they live… twenty percent live another year, while only five percent live another five years.
So you did your job: you confirmed the facts and researched the experience of others. Your future simulator is working fine, given the facts and knowledge necessary to make an accurate prediction.
Impossible Futures
What about treatments? What was common among those who lived the longest? More data for the future simulation. Desperately we long for hope and we’ll not leave any stone unturned in search for facts that will better our possibilities.
Perhaps there are experimental treatments being researched, but not available to patients yet? More Google searches. More emails to universities and labs around the world. Still no new facts emerge. You’re still hopeless. Your cure lies in an impossible future.
As Andy from Shawshank pointed out, hope is a good thing. Living without hope is like standing on a train track facing the train that is about to flatten you. It is scary. It is joyless. It is exhausting. Nobody’s soul just rolls over, accepting mortality without a fight. Your cure lies in an impossible future. Until some new fact makes an impossible future possible, you will experience the despair of all the negative future outcomes now.
At this point, your mind digs deep and finds a small, teeny, dust particle of a fact: perhaps a cure will be discovered soon. This really isn’t a fact strong enough to support hope, but it is an observation that has some truth to it. Creative minds do stumble upon answers, sometime even when they aren’t being directly sought. The slight bit of hope generated by this infinitesimal fact may just save your life. You cling to this hope. Your only hope. Any cure in the realm of impossibility lies on the other side of this truth.
Time goes on. Every morning you awaken to scan the internet and read the newspapers hoping to see those wonderful words: “New Cure for Pancreatic Cancer Discovered!” You’ve been getting weaker and you know the disease is taking its toll on you, but you keep that one fact, firmly lodged in your mind.
Just Suppose
I don’t know how completely you’ve immersed yourself in the feelings of this fictional cancer victim. We’ve wandered with the victim from a future of hope, to a hopeless future of despair, to a future limited to one single particle of truth and the minute joy that sliver of a hope brings. The day eventually comes when there is knock at the door.
Just suppose, there at the door is a man who says, “I had pancreatic cancer, but now I’m cured!” How would you react? Would you welcome him in and give him a big hug? or slam the door in his face for trying such a mean stunt– getting your hopes up when you know, under scrutiny, the facts are going to be fake.
Roller-coasters of hope are really hard emotionally. It takes a lot of energy to keep a fact lodged in the mind when all around you the stronger and more certain facts are trying to dislodge it from its place.
When you have nothing better to do someday, drag out the old 1939 version of “The Little Princess” with Shirley Temple as “Little Princess” Sara Crewe.
Sara is placed in a fancy boarding school while her father is off to fight the Boer War in South Africa. Later, Sara’s father’s name shows up as a causality of the war. Although a penniless orphan, she insists “My father, they said he died at Mafeking. But I don’t believe it!” This hope keeps her soul from sinking, but she eventually lets that little fact, that her father may be among the wounded, slip from her mind when boatload after boatload of wounded produce no sign of him… Hope fades, the soul despairs, sad ending. But this is a Shirley Temple flick! Almost by accident, she stumbles upon her father among the wounded as he was about to be taken away! Hurrah!
The roller-coaster of emotions experienced as hope rises and falls makes for great drama. But when it is your life, the pain isn’t like the pain shared from a movie– the pain really, really hurts.
Out of a sense of manners and courtesy, you invite the man in, but just like the doctor who dropped the bomb on you months before, you have a few questions for this man. “Did you really have pancreatic cancer?”
The man reaches into an office folder and produces medical reports. Blood test results, biopsy results, treatment schedules, they’re all on Fancy Clinic letterhead with doctor’s signatures. You look them over, but are still resisting. You’ve spent a long time in this state and it was hard getting here. “Are your really cured of pancreatic cancer? You’re not just a victim that hasn’t died yet, are you?”
Again, the man reaches into a folder to produce recent medical exams with that tell-tale block paragraph that indicates it was dictated over a phone to a documentation service– very common at major hospitals. The paragraph reads, “…patient evidences no symptoms of cancer, though many blood tests and biopsies were repeatedly conducted.”
“You do understand that this is really hard for me to believe, don’t you?”
“I understand,” says the man, “but I came here anyway, knowing your doubts would be strong, because I wanted you to know it was possible– I am the proof!”
I’ll let you imagine how the rest of the discussion went.
Bible Examples
Abraham
One of my favorite examples of hope comes from Romans 4:18-22
18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb. 20 Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised. 22 That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Romans 4:18-22
According to all experiential data, the possibility of a one hundred year old man and his eighty year old wife having a child is zero. Physically, women lose the ability to conceive and most men lose the ability to copulate at these ages. Even when both were of child-bearing years, apparently Abraham’s wife Sarah was infertile.
Read the story of Sarah’s grand scheme to fulfill God’s promise of innumerable descendants by giving her handmaid Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate in Genesis 16.
The circumstantial facts and prediction data made children by Abraham and Sarah an impossible future outcome. All future outcomes were negative and thus hopeless.
But to Abraham’s credit, he heard God’s promise and accepted it as a fact, even though other facts were in conflict with God’s promise. Abraham clung to the hope that was achievable (a positive and possible future outcome) through God’s promise. Thus “against all hope”, the hopelessness of physical circumstances and natural experiential data, “Abraham in hope believed”, allowing a promise from God to fit into a fact-slot, experiencing the joy of true hope when his future simulator recomputed a positive future outcome.
We’ll talk more about this verb “believed” in the chapter on “Faith“. For now, understand that there was a lot of resistance in his mind to accepting a promise from God as a fact that would influence his future simulation. The hard work that goes into lodging that promise into a fact slot and holding it there is powered by one’s faith. Abraham knew that the impossible positive future outcome, a miracle child, was only possible when he did not waver between accepting the promise of God and rejecting the promise of God, but fought the pressures of disbelief. Abraham’s persistence in waiting on God for the fulfillment of the promise was key, and it had the result of both strengthening his faith and receiving a blessing from God: “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Rahab
Another very interesting story of hope comes from the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapters 2 and 6, as the children of Israel conquered their promised land of Canaan. The very first battle the Israelites faced was against the heavily fortified, strategic city of Jericho.
Spies were sent into Jericho to discover the city’s strengths and weaknesses and gain an advantage in the coming battle, but the spies were spotted. Seeking a bed for the night, they were directed to Rahab’s house of prostitution in the city’s immense wall.
Truly Hopeless
Carve out a test future simulator in your mind and feed it with Rahab’s circumstances:
Rahab was a woman (verse 4). In that culture she was likely uneducated and defenseless. As a prostitute (verse 1), she was a necessary evil, shunned by a large affluent sector of the culture yet often visited by drunken bottom-dwellers. Nobody would be coming to her for advice or offering her a spot on the city council.
She possibly had children to support, the by-product of her profession. She employed the only assets she had at her disposal, her home and her body. She apparently was unmarried and experience showed that these women rarely lived to a ripe old age. We’re told from the text that she had a family (verse 12), but it’s possible that they had rejected her. We’re also told that the coming of the Israelites, the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea (verse 10) and tales of their decisive victory over stronger kings as they marched West, were cause for fear in Jericho (verse 11).
Lastly, her home was in the city wall (verse 15). This would be a strategic point of attack by an advancing army. In the battle, she would be the first to flee as flaming arrows and projectiles entered her windows and pounded her walls. Soldiers would quickly displace her as they defended the city and all her possessions would be lost.
As you let your test future simulator crank away against these circumstances, ask it whether any positive future outcomes were predicted. What are the chances that Rahab and her family will survive this imminent slaughter? Of all the people, Rahab’s situation is the most hopeless and despairing.
Impossible Future Made Possible
Rahab’s future simulator is desperately working to find a fact that will make the impossible future, the survival of herself and her family, a possibility. In through the door of her dumpy brothel comes the Israelite spies. Like a lightening bolt, a flash of inspiration charges her mind with a plan: if simulated correctly and a few dependencies fall into place, this plan would bring her the joy of hope in a positive future outcome! Listen to Rahab’s quick thinking as part 1 of her plan is played out under some tense drama.
2 And it was reported to the king of Jericho: “Behold, some men of Israel have come here tonight to spy out the land.” 3 So the king of Jericho sent to Rahab and said, “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, for they have come to spy out the whole land.”
Joshua 2:2-6
4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. So she said, “Yes, the men did come to me, but I did not know where they had come from. 5 At dusk, when the gate was about to close, the men went out, and I do not know which way they went. Pursue them quickly, and you may catch them!” 6 (But Rahab had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had laid out there.)
Here is yet another circumstance to add to our future simulation. Rahab has lied to the defenders of her city. This essentially makes her a traitor and a conspirator with the enemy spies. Should it be discovered that she helped these spies, she would be executed immediately and without mercy.
Part 1 of her plan is complete. She saved their lives and bought the spies some time. Next comes part 2 of the plan. What follows is a few verses between verse 12 and verse 21… feel free to read the whole story if you are interested.
12 Now therefore, please swear to me by the LORD that you will indeed show kindness to my family because I showed kindness to you. Give me a sure sign 13 that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will deliver us from death.”
Joshua 2:12-18
o o o
15 Then Rahab let them down by a rope through the window, since the house where she lived was built into the wall of the city.
o o o
17 The men said to her, “We will not be bound by this oath you made us swear 18 unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother and brothers and all your family into your house.
o o o
21 “Let it be as you say,” she replied, and she sent them away. And when they had gone, she tied the scarlet cord in the window.
Part 2 of Rahab’s plan is a success– the Israelite spies recognize her kindness and willingness to risk her safety. They are grateful for the supply of knowledge she has offered and agree to deliver her in the coming battle. They are pleased to be helped in their escape from the city.
Now comes the truly interesting part of this story. Rahab’s entire plan now depends on part 3: her willingness to hang a scarlet cord out her window in a visible manner when the army of the Israelites enter the land. I’m not sure how long a time this cord had to be hung out the window, but Rahab got that cord out there immediately. She wasn’t going to take any chances of it being missed by any of the Israelite fighters. But consider what would happen if someone in her own city started to wonder about that cord…
Rahab’s situation is hopeless and all her possible future outcomes are negative except for just one little promise. As long as she held true to that promise, the joy of hope in a positive outcome was all hers. Notice how similar this is to Abraham’s situation. Rahab has only one promise that makes one future outcome positive and she is banking on it.
But there’s more… The text quoted above uses the Hebrew word “cord” twice (verses 18 & 21). This word is Tiqvah (תִּקְוָה). Tiqvah and its various forms are found 34 times in the Old Testament. Except for these two uses, right here in Joshua chapter 2, EVERY OTHER TIME this word is used, the word is translated “hope”, “longing” or “expectation”– not “cord”. Isn’t that interesting! Rahab was hanging out her window a scarlet “hope”.
Like Abraham’s story, there is a “faith” aspect to this story, but for Rahab the faith part was a bit easier because all other options led immediately to death for herself and her family. She had nothing to loose. Rahab’s best card was already out on the table. There was no plan ‘B’.
As an addendum to this story, jump ahead to chapter 6. As you might remember, the army of the Israelites circle the city quietly, led by seven priests blowing seven horns, once every every day for six days Then on the seventh day, they quietly circle the city seven times, led by the priests blowing horns. After the seventh circle on the seventh day, they waited for a long blast on a ram’s horn before releasing a mighty shout. Verse 20 says the walls collapsed. The army rushed straight into the city and killed everyone, but Rahab and her family were spared.
And Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her father’s household and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent to spy out Jericho. So she has lived among the Israelites to this day.
Joshua 6:25
As a further postscript, the Bible tells us that this faithful, brave, hopeful prostitute had more of her impossible future possibilities made possible when an Israelite man named Salmon of the tribe of Judah found a woman of this character irresistible. They were married and gave birth to Boaz… a lead character in the story of redemption found in the book of Ruth and ancestor in the line of King David, and Jesus Christ.
Do We Have Any Hope?
The Bible doesn’t talk about pancreatic cancer, but about sin. Read “Test Yourself” and “What Went Wrong?” for a good discussion on sin. Sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve– instantaneously bringing the condemnation of death upon the world: A separation from God and an inevitable mortality.
Even the healthiest among us, not stricken with cancer or heart disease, will die. The prognosis is certain. The facts we feed into our future simulators are undeniable. All future outcomes are negative– we are absolutely hopeless. Many people seem to live their lives, stumbling along as though death wasn’t really going to happen! How can this be possible?
Remember when we are faced with hopelessness, our minds will cling to whatever, small, tiny morsel of information can bring us some hope. Nobody can live without hope– life without hope is unbearable.
Unfortunately, minds can be deceived and bend under strong delusions. A lie can seem factual enough to get jammed into the fact slots reserved for truth, thus feeding our future simulators with bogus inputs, resulting in incorrect outputs. Hope based on lies is a false hope. Promised consequences can be doubted so that immoral behavior seems justifiable. This is a sad state for mankind. If people remain deluded and their future simulators continue to pump out incorrect future outcomes to base decisions on, not only is mortal death certain, but eternal death will also be certain.
Tell someone they will die and they say, “So what? That’s a long time from now…” or “I’m a good person, I’ll just go to heaven when I die.” or “Dead people are just dead– no afterlife, no punishment– so I’m just going to enjoy the time I have!”
In the Bible, the truth is, we are all in deep trouble. There is an afterlife and God is going to judge everyone. All people everywhere should understand they have no hope. We are all sinners, walking in a line led by blind advisers, happy to lead everyone into the same pit they are heading for themselves.
Our corruption is not only a continuing problem, but the sins we have already committed are enough to condemn us to eternal death in God’s court of law. What could we possibly say to God to avoid a just and deserved punishment? Nothing. God can’t just look the other way or God wouldn’t be a Just God.
Hope in the Bible
However, if you are a soul, fearful of the hopeless situation you are in, read on. Not only is God “just”, but God is “love”. Before time began, God has been working a plan to redeem sinners through a process that will restore our relationship with Him, the relationship we all lost when Adam and Eve fell. We’ll all still die a certain mortal death, but God has promised that those reconciled with Him will also be given a new life, just like the new life Jesus was given on Easter Sunday.
All hope in a restored relationship with God, and a new life after we die a mortal’s death, is made possible through Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Jesus, a sinless sacrifice, died in our place, bearing the eternal punishment we deserve. If you’re inclined to believe the new life we are promised after we die is “too good to be true”, God proved that death has been conquered by raising Jesus from the dead and making Him the very first being to be resurrected to this new life.
God offers us this promise of hope through two steps: First, repent of the life you are now living– we live lives based on lies, making decisions to act out behavior directly opposite the will of God. Confess to God your responsibility for living this opposite life and commit your way to His way. Second, all your hope in a restored relationship with God and a life resurrected to live eternally lies in a future outcome that is only possible when all your trust is placed in Jesus. That trust lives out every day when we follow and obey Jesus.
Each of us are a Rahab, hopeless until Jesus shows up at our door. Then we devise a plan of faith: Jesus promises to save us when we turn from our sin and commit our lives to trust Him to lead us into that hope.
Joy in Hope
Our fictional pancreatic cancer victim found hope to live every new day by believing that a cure may someday be found. Abraham found hope in the positive future outcome that waiting on the Lord’s promise provided. Rahab, hopeless beyond all our imaginations, took advantage of a singular opportunity and risked everything because it was the only plan that offered her hope and freedom from despair. Our beings take advantage of this built-in, energy producing, phenomenon all the time. When we have a hope for a favorable future outcome, we, in a strange sort of way, actually experience the future joy of that hope, even before that future outcome is secured. Once we’ve been promised a positive future outcome, we sense Joy in advance, before we even get there.
Look one of your children straight in the eye and tell them tomorrow you will take them to get a big ice cream cone at the zoo. It is normal for that child to explode with joy over such a promise of a positive future outcome.
God made a way for us to escape the punishment of eternal death we deserve and be resurrected into a new life lived eternally by repenting of our sins and putting all our trust in Jesus. This is such a immensely favorable future outcome that we experience overflowing joy! So life-changing is this joy that the world doesn’t understand it. Strong forces will try to take it from you by either dislodging the truth of Jesus from your mind or deceiving you with lies to make this future outcome improbable. The battle is real. Holding firm to a promise takes strength and perseverance. Don’t cave!
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