Neither Optimism nor Despair: Why Hope Is Better

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In an old bit titled “Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy,” Comedian Louis C.K. mocked how crabby people can be today, despite living in an age so much better and easier than any other time in human history. Despite incredible technological innovations, like smart phones and airplanes, we still find ways to be upset. 

Similarly, National Review senior editor Charles C.W. Cooke recently wrote about the lack of optimism in contemporary America, even amidst great advancements. In his essay, “Against Misery,” Cooke, a self-identified atheist, claimed Americans have reason to be optimistic and to push back against the doldrums of contemporary despair,  

Per Gallup, 81% of Americans are either ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied with their lives, while just 20% are either ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied with the way things are going in the United States in general. And why wouldn’t they be, when, day in and day out, our leaders declaim and condemn and lament the awful state of things. 

The staggering gap identified by this Gallup data is worth exploring. Cooke noted that even amidst the negative views about our country, often portrayed by political leaders and the media, Americans still seem happy. And they should be, given that we have the strongest economy in the world, the most durable constitutional system, the strongest military, and we are the home of the world’s tech industry—amongst other critical factors.   

Cooke thinks this gap is attributable to the fact that most respondents to the poll, whose lives individually are good, are answering on behalf of supposedly unhappy people—many of whom probably do not exist. That’s because, Cooke worries, “the electorate has adopted a worldview that renders satisfaction philosophically unattainable.” However, for a majority of Americans to like their own lives but overwhelmingly not like the state of their own country is, as Cooke said, “absurd.” After all, “Americans live in America.” 

There’s much to appreciate about Cooke’s analysis, including his observation that people think and operate within the framework of a worldview.  There is, however, more to say from the framework of a distinctively Christian worldview. Specifically, our options are never merely between optimism and pessimism. 

Christians are right to lament moral collapse but should never be reduced to despair. At the same time, Christians should not be merely optimistic, cheerful, or against misery. Rather, Paul wrote that God’s people should abound in hope (Romans 15:13). This is not the kind of wrongly defined wishful-thinking “hope” used by political campaigns. As one political scientist wrote, such ideas are “gas giants” without necessary subjects and objects, which leave us to ask: Hope for what? Or in what, exactly? 

The great commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. liked to say that the “wells of regeneration are infinitely deep.” Of course, Christians know Who the living water is that brings regeneration. As Peter described in his first epistle—a letter full of hope with both a subject and an object—Christians are “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” 

The Apostle Paul also underscored the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord throughout his epistles, especially in his prayer for the saints at Ephesus recorded in 1:18.Paul prayed that they might “know what is the hope to which he has called you”—a hope he anchored in the death, burial, and Resurrection of Christ.  

But Paul didn’t stop there. Christ is not only resurrected, proving victory over death, but He is also reigning over all creation. Christ is seated “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” 

Though Cooke makes a compelling case for optimism in our time and the need for a revival of what William Wordsworth called the “happy warrior,” his analysis is based on the temporal, not the eternal. That kind of hope is vulnerable to corruption and loss. Even more, calls to optimism are ultimately unfulfilling and unsatisfactory because they are untethered from the true source of contentment that only hope can provide.   

To learn more about the biblical idea of hope, and how it grounds us for the challenges of this cultural moment, check out Truth Rising: The Study. In four lessons, Truth Rising: The Study equips Christians to be people of courage. Visit colsoncenter.org/study to learn more and become a small-group facilitator.

This article originally appeared on BreakPoint.org; shared with permission. 

Photo credit: ©GettyImages/ksenija18kz

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.