Rethinking Hope, Trading It In For Imagine

I’ve entertained myself this past weekend with an interesting “issue” regarding the notion of hope. My class on Saturday morning was discussing our thoughts on the required reading for that day, the book Peace Is Every Step. This book is a collection of short teachings from the Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh that are largely centered on meditation and ways we can apply meditation in our lives. During our discussion we debated one teaching entitled “Hope as an Obstacle”. In this teaching, Naht Hanh makes the statement that hope can get in the way of being in the present.

“We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here. … Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment.” (Peace Is Every Step, page 41)

When I read this it really resonated with me, but during the class discussion it was clear that this didn’t sit well with everyone. I became curious, why had I so quickly accepted hope as an obstacle? I was discussing this with my wife when I found the answer. I realized that I was able to agree with Naht Hanh because I had come to dislike how the theology of hope has been abused. Let me be clear in saying that there are situations in which hope will play an important role in one’s life journey, and in no way should it be eliminated. But hope can not be used as a substitute for action.

Our lives, communities, and world are filled with tough problems that beg for our involvement. Too many times I have seen people around me, when faced with these issues, just throw their hands up in the air, walk away, and simply “hope for the best”. In doing so, I feel that hope was used as a free pass to avoid getting involved. Hope, in this situation, is a passive reaction that leaves the problem for someone else to deal with later. Solutions require dialog and action, and dialog and action require us to be to be fully engaged. We can’t just hope for the problem to go away, we need to jump in and do something. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that we engage issues with an intent to overpower the opposition either. I’m reading Walter Wink’s book Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way in which Wink suggests that neither fight or flight is the answer, but that Jesus has shown us a “third way”. Buddhist have a philosophy called the Middle Way which shuns the extremes and suggests that enlightenment is only found in the Middle Way. I don’t have the space or time to expand on either of these concepts here, but I highly encourage you to read about both of them! I am not, repeat I am not, suggesting that Wink’s “Third Way” and the Buddhist Middle Way are identical in their implementation, but that both recognize the danger of the extremes. My feelings are that both are encouraging us to be creatively involved with the world and that doing so is the only way to improve our personal lives and address the tough issues that are around us.

So if hope wasn’t the right theology for me, then what was? On Sunday evening I was given a gift at the Trinity Lutheran Church Student Ministries kick off. The theme for this year is “Imagine”, and during the program we listened to John Lennon’s popular song with the same title. It was at that moment that I found “imagine” as the word I needed. To imagine one has to be actively involved, if only in just dreaming. Through dreaming we are forced to be engaged, to explore our feelings, to seek out information, and apply creativity to produce solutions. I believe in doing so, that there will come a time that you will be compelled to act on that dream and put it into action. It may not be right away, but imagining leaves space for action to take place.

I feel that imagining a better world sounds a lot better than just hoping for a better world. What do you think?