Hope in God Ahead

“Remember when the front grill of your car was plastered with insects? No more. We live in the midst of an insect apocalypse.”

My three children and I were listening to a presentation at a Conservation Area by an expert on pollinators, and I wonder how my kids hear these words. They have grown up in a world where terms like “environmental collapse” and “end of the human race” feature quite regularly. This is darker than the nuclear scare I grew up with during the Cold War. Will my kids have hope for the future or will they be tempted to despair?

The statistics on mental health for Gen Z are troubling. The Economist (Feb 27, 2019) reports they are “stressed, depressed and exam-obsessed.” Some of this anxiety is due to electronic media habits, lack of roots and economic pressures. But I suspect the apocalyptic discourse looms large in their imaginations like no generation ever before. In this federal election it was certainly a hot topic – no pun intended.

Some look to government to regulate and tax us to sustainability, while others look to the media, market and technology to ameliorate the sources of ecological harm. I hope all cultural sectors offer some green pathways forward. But human ambition and greed got us into this mess in the first place, and so ultimately, my hope searches for other light than human promises.

Not pie in sky
Megachurch pastor Bill Hybels always said the local congregation was “the hope of the world.” It seemed a little over-stated, but it is certainly true that Christianity is known as a religion of hope. Our congregation is now working through a post-election sermon series entitled “Hope Reignited” – to address late-modern despondency and paralysis cultivated by mass shootings, racial strife, climate change and fake news.

We believe our faith bears witness to a story begun in the miracle of creation and which moves through exile to exodus and from death to resurrection; it’s grounded in a realistic view of our desperate and dark situation but leans toward the light of God’s new world. Creation and resurrection stand as evidence: something radically new is possible. Ultimately, our hope is in God ahead more than God above, his kingdom intimated but not yet consummated.

Some are quick to say, “But our faith is not pie in the sky when we die” – a comment often born of a fear that such hope will be passive, and even allow for ecological mismanagement. The opposite error, however, seems more pertinent to me in our secular milieu: that our hope will either reside in autonomous human ingenuity or sputter out in nihilistic self-indulgence. Hope needs a fully open imagination with supernatural mooring. It needs a grace that, even in spite of human actions, makes things new.

Hope has legs
Here’s a way to think about hope in God ahead: the deepest part of ourselves can be non-anxious, knowing that God has promised to never again destroy the earth as he did with the flood, and instead has promised a new heaven and a new earth. That means even though our planet’s life is finite (the sun will only last five billion more years before it expands and engulfs the earth), God has plans – plans I cannot imagine yet, but plans I hope are good, beautiful and trustworthy. This is our ultimate hope.

Within this ultimate hope of new creation are penultimate hopes. I hope the conscience of multitudes catches up and overwhelms the emotional bond we have with convenience, comfort and economic power. I hope we can enjoy hiking, canoeing and camping in parks for decades to come. I hope, too, to see more insects – not crushed against my car’s grill but resting on our bicycle helmets.

These penultimate hopes motivate action: to have children, to plant trees, to support a conscientious political party and to attentively photograph the mysterious beauty that surrounds us. Gen Z may be stressed, but many are not paralyzed, as we saw when millions joined the Climate Strike on September 27 – in 4,500 locations in 150 countries. Perhaps psychological stress, too, can motivate positive action which in turn becomes a signpost of hope.

Creation groans and we along with it. Yet the Spirit whispers a promise that the God who went before us also lies ahead of us. Even if the earth warms and icebergs crash into the sea, we can hope and live as people marked by a resurrection story. It is a hope that trusts time, and so it needs its twin virtue of patience. Not passive waiting, but acting out of a deep dependence on the God ahead.