Is Hope Necessary?

What does it mean to be human? In a previous essay, we explored suffering as an inevitable component of the human experience. Though the pain and fear-inducing elements of suffering are real and concerning, it can also be seen as the rich soil in which people encounter profound revelations of God. This redemptive quality of suffering is what enables us to face it more boldly. 

In this essay, I want to build on that exploration and consider a related theme: hope. Hope, in its simplest form, exists because of an unfulfilled desire–there is a gap between where I am and where I long to be. It generally carries a positive connotation and can be experienced in all sorts of ways. We hope for improved health, reconciled relationships, world peace, economic development, and so on. At MIT, one area especially saturated with hope is career advancement–contributing meaningful research to the field, applying for postdoc positions, securing tenure for faculty positions, and more.

While hope is indeed a commendable virtue, it also carries a burdensome reality. Anyone who has ever experienced hope will likely acknowledge that hoping is difficult because it is inseparably tied to waiting–and waiting is difficult because it brings with it a host of demanding and exhausting emotions. The back-and-forth movement between imagined outcomes can be mentally and emotionally taxing. Moreover, we are often left without helpful guidance on how to endure the waiting period, resulting in some people surrendering to anxious frenzy, while others attempt to avoid hope altogether as a way of protecting themselves from disappointment. Still others oscillate between the two. 

All of this raises important questions: Should we still hope despite its demanding costs? Is it better to detach ourselves from hope? Or is there such a thing as hoping well? I believe there is, and the remainder of this essay will be dedicated to considering why hope still matters.

Thomas Aquinas offers a helpful starting point by defining hope from a Christian perspective: 

The good we first and foremost hope for from God is an unlimited good…and that is eternal life, the enjoyment of God himself…And just as it is not right to hope for anything else as ultimate goal, but only as serving that goal, so we mustn’t hope in men or other creatures as if they were the primary agent of our happiness, but only as tools or instruments of that agent…Having God as object in this way defines it [hope] as a theological virtue[1] [emphasis mine].

At first glance, this quote can seem a bit crass. The idea of viewing human relationships as merely instrumental sounds reductive. However, Aquinas’ main point here is not to diminish human relationships, but to clarify humanity’s design: we are made to enjoy God as our ultimate telos. In the spirit of Apostle Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 10:31, we might add that anything and everything else in life (e.g. jobs, research, studies, etc.) should point beyond themselves to a greater prize, namely God. Aquinas’ central claim about hope is simple: we ought to hope in God, that we get more of God. In the Bible, this orientation is often expressed in the language of God creating his people for his glory (Is. 43:6–7, 21, 60:21).

At this point, I’d like to take a brief excursus and double-click on the term, “glory” as a way of deepening our understanding of hope and how it should shape our day-to-day lives. In the Bible, “glory” is defined in numerous ways, but for our purposes I will focus on one sense of the term. One definition of the Hebrew word for glory (kavod) is “weight.” From this we can infer that something described as possessing weight (kavod)–or being weighty–can be understood figuratively as being important, grand, or magnificent, and therefore worthy of praise.[2] Donald Fairbairn, in his text Life in the Trinity, expands on this idea:

...when we “glorify God” or “give God glory,” we are praising him because he is great and magnificent. This does not mean that we are giving him anything he does not already possess. He is majestic and spectacular whether anyone acknowledges this or not. Rather, for us to give God glory is to acknowledge that he is glorious, to state publicly that he is vastly greater than we are.[3] 

In this sense, then, to say that mankind was created for God’s glory can mean that we are created to behold and acknowledge God’s magnificence–an encounter that evokes awe and admiration of him. If God designed us for this very purpose, then it follows that encountering his presence and worshiping him is where we truly thrive, feel most at home, and experience the deepest fulfillment–just as fish were designed to flourish in water. 

Bridging this understanding of “glory” to Aquinas’ words, then, the way we hope in any given matter should go beyond simple acquisition of what we desire. Instead, our hope should be framed with the larger question: Will this (e.g. new job, faculty tenure, postdoc, etc.) deepen my understanding of and admiration for God? We are invited to shift our thinking from, “I hope I get my top choice–to work at Company A,” to “I hope that whatever opportunities open up for me–whether it’s my top choice or even a choice I have not yet considered–I will encounter God more deeply.” The focus shifts from fulfilling human desire or conforming to cultural expectations, to desiring and hoping for God himself. In other words, we ought to view both granted and restricted opportunities as means that serve to enrich our worship of him. To reiterate the central claim: to hope in God for more of God is what it means to be human.

The opening verses of Psalm 23 capture this imagery nicely. The psalmist begins by painting an image of a flourishing life through the analogy of shepherding: “The LORD is my shepherd…He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters” (Ps. 23:1–2). For sheep, such an environment is ideal for their well-being. Immediately following this idyllic imagery, the psalmist then describes a life lived along “paths of righteousness” (Ps. 23:3), inviting us to see these images as parallel. As lush green grass and still waters are critical for a sheep’s well-being, so the paths of righteousness are essential for human flourishing. And how should we understand these “paths of righteousness?” Christians ultimately see them fulfilled in Jesus—the perfect embodiment of righteousness—who is one with the Father (John 10:30). Thus, to be led in paths of righteousness is, in the fullest sense, to be led into communion with God himself. This brings us back to the central idea: ultimate human flourishing—and therefore our deepest hope—is found in encountering God.

What this suggests about our ambitions and hopes for career advancement is that we can approach them with hope. We can look beyond advancement itself and trust that both our current and future opportunities may lead to deeper fulfillment—namely, encountering divine glory. Reframing professional opportunities as new vantage points from which to witness God’s glory, I believe, is how we can continue to hope well and how we experience a fuller realization of what it means to be human.

[1] Timothy S. McDermott, Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1989), 344–345.

[2]  The New Testament captures this idea as well, in Greek. While the noun form of “glory” (doxa) can mean “greatness, splendor, honor,” the verb (doxazo) is translated as, “to praise or extol.” See entry for δοξα and δοξάζω in Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 203–204.

[3] Donald Fairbairn, Life in the Trinity (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 17.