The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
Technological innovations like the Cathode-Ray tube at the end of the 19th century and the first forms LED and touchscreen technology in the 1960s changed our vision of the world. Even before the Covid shutdowns, many people would spend 6-8-12 hours in front of screens, computers and phones at work, and phones, computers, and TVs at home. Screens display our labor and our entertainment. Screens mediate much of our engagement with friends and family and the world itself.
Human nature tends to prioritize sight over the other senses. We humans have always wanted to see to believe. Our earliest ancestors saw the forbidden fruit and ate it, rather than remembering and hearing the word of the Lord. Israel cast a cow in gold while Moses listened to the Lord’s law up on the mountain. And now, more than ever, we have centralized our lives around our screens, which has in turn created an increased dependency on our visual inclinations. More than any other moment in human history, we inhabit a visual world. We video and still-shot photograph every moment with portable documentation devices, and those moments we missed, we think, “I really wish we’d been able to capture that one!” We document and display our lives with the sharpness of hundreds upon hundreds of pixels per inch. We FaceTime cross-continental family chats at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We can see every square inch of the planet from satellite imagery and every corner of each country with Google Earth.
We can see, now, more than ever, yet we suffer from anxiety, depression, and suicide. We can see just about anything we want, but this does not let us see what we need. In fact, we cannot see what we need.
In a visual world, we need something invisible. In a visual world, we need invisible hope. Our cultural Covid moment taught us that often we cannot see the most significant things. The virus that has plagued the world is invisible to our eyes because of its size, but concretely real. The hope our world needs—that you need and I need—is also invisible. Listen to how the Bible explains it: “Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24–25).
Here we find help for finding invisible hope in our visual world. We learn two things about invisible hope here: hope is an invisible thing and hope is an invisible action.
1. Hope is an Invisible Thing
Romans 8 stars the Holy Spirit. We learn in this chapter that he is the Spirit of Life (8:1-11), the Spirit of Adoption (8:12-17), and the Spirit of Intercession (8:18-30). Our verses are embedded in this context, with the flow of the chapter pooling into a reservoir of hope. We learn in the verses just before 8:24 of the hope of the creation and the hope of the Christian.
The hope of the creation is this: “For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children” (Romans 8:20-21). The hope of the creation is the hope of freedom from captivity to decay. The hope that God will one day unravel the second law of thermodynamics, the law woven into our fallen world that things devolve from order to disorder, from integrity to destruction. One day God will reconstitute the world with the life he intended, a world ordered and integrated in perfection and completion, without breakdowns or shutdowns.
The hope of the creation is based in the hope of the Christian: “The creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:21-23). Spiritual regeneration foretells the physical regeneration of the Christian and the cosmos. As God raised Jesus from the dead both in spirit and body, he raises Christians from the dead in spirit with the promise that he will one day raise them from the dead in their bodies. And as he will one day raise them from the dead in their bodies, he will regenerate the entire created order and make all things new. The hope of the creation and the hope of the Christian are the future reality that God will fix our broken-down old bodies and this broken-down old world. Thus we receive the reminder:“In this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24–25).
The Apostle uses the word hope three times here, each time in the noun form. Sometimes our family will sit at the dinner table when we’ve finished eating and fill out a Mad Lib story. We take turns adding words to the blanks. Our kids have learned that when they need to provide a noun they need to provide a word that is a person, place, or thing. Here in Romans 8 hope is a noun, an invisible thing—the redemption that God promises us. But hope is also a person and a place. It’s the person of Christ by the Spirit, and hope is the future place God prepares for his people.
Hope is a real thing, but we can’t see it. Some things we can’t see because of how small they are (like a virus or a molecule). Some things we can’t see because they’re not physical things (like thoughts). Some things we can’t see because they are future things. Hope is a future thing. We can’t see hope, because, hope inhabits a moment that has not yet arrived. We cannot see something future. We can imagine the future. We can talk about the future. We can dream about the future. But we can’t actually see the future until the future becomes the present. Hope is an invisible thing, because our hope is a future thing. Our hope is objective reality, but not yet present reality. Hope is eschatological. Hope is God’s golden guarantee that Jesus will return and claim his church as his own. Hope is the platinum promise of the Prince of Peace that his resurrection ensures our own resurrection, that Satan will be defeated, that sin will be disintegrated, and that death will die.
When we follow Jesus, God gives us so many gifts, and like parents who have wrapped gifts for their kids and put them under a Christmas tree, God delights when we freshly discover these gifts. One of the gifts we need, now, more than ever, is the gift of hope. Scripture describes those outside of Christ as those “who have no hope” (Eph. 2:12, 1 Thess 4:13). Too often, we talk about hope as a feeling we have (which it is), but before we can feel hope we have to have a hope worth hoping in. We need something real and true in the future that we know deep our bones is as real as the chair we’re sitting in.
Likewise, too often, I hear Christian preachers talking about hope as “the best is yet to come.” These folks are often bringing hope too close into the present. They say or imply that we will soon turn the corner toward living our best life and we will get the family, the friends, the financial situation, the success, the recognition that we want. This vision makes hope too earthy, too soon, too worldly. We have a real hope, and the best is yet to come—but that’s a promise that when Christ returns or we meet him after our last breath we will live an eternally best life. Here we see that hope as a noun can be either true or false. We can have a vision of the future that is either real (what God promises) or false or temporary (what the world offers).
2. Hope is an Invisible Action
Here we transition from hope as noun to hope as a verb. Hope is a thing, the return of Christ to resurrect the world, the promise of eternal life, the regeneration of the cosmos as he has regenerated the hearts of Christians. And because hope is an objective, real, future thing, we hope, as an action, a verb. We both have hope and we do hope. Hope is an invisible action we do in response to the invisible thing that God will do. Hope is not something we just magically or mystically have or don’t have. We receive the objective reality of what God has done and what he promises to do and then we actively and intentionally hope in that hope. We follow the footpaths plodded down by father Abraham: “He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be” (Romans 4:18). Literally in 4:18 it says, “against hope, upon hope, he believed…” Hope is the action we take in response to God’s gracious provision and promise. By his grace, God pours hope into us by his Spirit, so that we are able to choose to hope. In our sinful hearts and minds, we always choose despair over hope, or false hope over true hope. But God graciously regenerates our hearts and minds so that we can hope in hope.
The sneaky thing is that those who do not have true, Christian hope can also choose hope. They can choose to believe that things will improve. They can sing the song from Walt Disney World’s Carousel of Progress that “There’s a big bright beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day.” And, in a measure, such hope can sustain a person. Sometimes an unbeliever will be more actively hope-full than a believing Christian. But the problem about hope without Christ is that such hope will ultimately disappoint. At worst, such hope is deluded, and at best such hope is partial and temporary. It will never last forever. It might sustain a person through life, but it will not sustain a person through eternity.
The hope of the gospel of the light and life of Christ offers to us both objectively real eternal hope that can inspire in us true feelings of hope. We can all plot ourselves on this 2x2 chart, with hope is that is either eternal and real or false and temporary and a sense of choosing to be hope-full or hope-less. Christians have hope as an invisible, real, objective, real, eternal thing. The hope of Christ’s return, the hope of your redemption and resurrection.
But Christians who have real, objective hope can get discouraged by the swelling currents of the seas we sail in the seasons of our sojourn. We can lose sight of the truth. We can hurt so deeply that we lose a sense of the active choice to hope in our hope. The noise of the news and the ways of the world can turn us inward so that we do not feel full of hope. The skies in a Christian life can shadow so darkly that they even feel like placing themselves in the bottom left quadrant of despair.
NonChristians might feel hope or they might not. If they do not feel a sense of hope, they might be in a place of despair. They might be walking a pathway so dark that you can’t see the light and they aren’t sure they will make it out. But nonChristians can also be full of hope. Such a hope might be real, yet temporary or delusional. Either way, it will leave the hoping person eternally disappointed.
But here’s what the Spirit is doing. He’s moving folks from despair, discouragment, and disappointment to delight. A delight grounded in the sure hope that will not disappoint, because it’s promised by the eternal God; the Father who sent the Son to become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ; the Son who lived a sinless life and died a sinner’s death on the cross, who as buried and raised from the dead so that anyone who will turn from their sin and trust in him will be forgiven their sin and given eternal life; the Spirit who fills the hearts of those in Christ with hope. Anyone can move, wherever they are, to a place of real and hope-full delight.
I love the move Shawshank Redemption. It’s a brutal picture of life in prison, based on the story of Andy Dufresne, a man falsely convicted of a crime. Andy is sentenced to prison at Shawshank, where he befriends Red, a man who knows how to get things, like magazines, posters, cigarettes, and a small pick-axe called a rock hammer for carving figurines out of rocks. Andy asks Red to get him a rock hammer and after awhile a large poster for his cell-room wall.
At one point in the movie, Andy is put in solitary confinement for playing classical music over the prison PA system. When Andy first returns to the lunchroom, he tells his friends his time in solitary was the easiest time he ever did. They don’t believe him.
“I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company,” he explains.
They ask if they let him take the record player into the cell with him. He explains that he had the music in his mind and heart. Red says that he used to play harmonica but that it doesn’t make sense anymore, not in prison.
“Here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget that there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside they can’t get to, they can’t touch.”
“What are you talking about?” Red asks.
“Hope,” Andy says.
“Hope…let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea…”
But Andy refuses to give up hope. Andy has a real hope and chooses to believe that hope.
It turns out that Andy was not just thinking happy thoughts, but that he had a plan to escape the prison and start a new life.
And he does escape, by tunneling through the wall of his cell, crawling through a sewer pipe and using his savings under a new name to buy a small hotel on the beach in Mexico.
He leaves Red a clue, telling him to look under a black rock in a field if he ever gets out. Red does, and finds a note from Andy with enough money to buy tickets to join Andy in Mexico.
In that note, Andy says, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Red finally understand the unseen hope that Andy had and why he hoped in that hope.
Now, for decades The Shawshank Redemption has been my favorite movie, and I’ve known it was based on a novella by Stephen King (who isn’t exactly known for his happy stories). Recently, I read the novella, and I found an interesting section that didn’t make it into the movie.
An inmate named Tommy provides information that might lead to Andy’s acquittal and release from prison. And it says that Andy “said that it was as if Tommy had produced a key which fit a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like his own cell. Only instead of holding a man, that cage held a tiger, and that tiger’s name was Hope. Williams had produced a key that unlocked the cage and the tiger was out, willy-nilly, to roam his brain.”
This is what the gospel offers to us. A key to unlock the invisible tiger of hope in our hearts and minds, an invisible tiger that eats our screens for breakfast.
Danny Slavich is the Pastor of Cross United Church in Pompano Beach. He completed his PhD at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His dissertation is entitled “That the World May Know: A Trinitarian Multiethnic Ecclesiology. Danny is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
