Missing the Point? Hope

Hope is one third part of faith, hope and love. Faith, hope and love are the only things that will outlast everything else.   

But, hope only exists because of what is hoped for.  It isn’t a stand-alone eternal verity. Hope believes what God has promised, especially those things promised that we live in hope for.  The apostle Paul stated that hope realised is not hope. Hope anchors us to the future God has promised, a future that is not yet.

Hope, however, seems to have been transmogrified (surprisingly/magically) into positive mental attitude (PMA).  Not a lot wrong with a positive attitude. It is certainly better than a negative one, and a positive attitude has all sorts of personal benefits.  But to confuse biblical hope with a positive mental attitude is confusing one species for another, and the confusion is an extinction of hope.  

• PMA is meant to receive its inheritance now – hope later.  

• PMA is about an anticipated better life now, primarily for me - hope is about an assured better future for us.

• PMA is blind to things that aren’t in any shape or form positive  - hope sees the future but with clear eyed realism about the present. 

Hope is much richer and premised on better things than a positive attitude can ever hope to be.  

The fatal flaw in PMA is that it is overly optimistic about humanity and our ability to offer genuine change.  It teeters towards hubris, and that doesn’t go down well with God, quite aside from being a disaster for us.  

If we trade genuine ‘long-game’ hope for a ‘short-term’ positive attitude we may be missing the point.