More Walking in St. Louis Last Week

Field Notes From A Religion-Less Christian

October 23, 2022

Things Are Bad. I Need Hope. And There It Is. 

“Happy are they who fear the Lord…..their descendants will be mighty in the land, the generation of the upright will be blessed.” (Psalm 112)

I do not believe that God will intervene in our affairs and make things right. Oh, if only that were true. Too, I have to be honest enough to say that my idea of right could be just as damaging and destructive as yours. 

But I do believe that all will be well. All is, and will be, held in God’s care and security even though the world burns and the nations roar and plunder. 

This is where I live. 

I am bereft at how the authoritarian and anti-democratic leaders and forces are gaining ascendancy, the climate change science hasn’t created the urgency necessary, the world’s population swells with all striving for sustainable standards of living….all this, and I do not believe God will do anything to change this march to our demise.

But I do believe we can do something. I do believe many of us are doing something. I know no certainty that all of our efforts will work.

All that, but I do believe all will be well as we, the human race, suffer and die. 

How so? What could possibly give hope within such pessimism, light within such darkness? It is quite simply that one, Jesus of Nazareth, who was killed because of incarnating distributive justice, was raised from the dead, and rules/reigns now. Jesus is Risen. Jesus is Lord. Not to be missed in that declaration short-hand (Jesus is Risen/Lord) is the actual Jesus, one who lived for the economically, politically, socially and religiously least, last, lost, little and dead, and was executed because of that living. He did not die to save us from a troubled conscience or from an angry God. He died, we killed him, because we didn’t like how he lived. So this: to say He Lives and He is Lord is to say the way he lived then now lives and rules/reigns, despite our killing ways. 

And then, for me, there is one more step that must be taken in order for this to hold water. It is that this truth that Jesus is Risen and Jesus is Lord is not true because it is true. It is true because it is too good not to be true. What this means is that while we do not see today any intervening salvation we have indeed heard of such and it turns out that hope has always come from the promise stated, not the situation on the ground actualized. Faith, the wherewithal to live in hope, comes by hearing (Romans 10). 

Today I hear the promise. Not always, alas, loud clear, but I do hear it. And I am delivered.