By Jason Heron, OblSB
My friend signs all of her emails with the acronym “EGBOK: Everything’s Gonna Be Okay.” To some people, this might seem naive, tone deaf, even irresponsible. Consider the dismal tide of human greed and violence that keeps the 24-hour news cycle spinning. That’s the same dismal tide that fills the pages of many history books. If you watch the news and read your history, it seems things have never been okay. Why would anyone think things will eventually be okay? Isn’t my friend’s email signature a piece of foolishness?
I’m prone to think this way. Life in this universe sometimes seems to me like a cruel joke. I didn’t ask to exist, but here I am. And now that I’m here, I have to put up with my own failures, other people’s messy choices, the dreariness of history, the strife of political life, and everything else. I think about all of this too often. It makes me feel like a rat in a cage.
In other words, I’m prone to despair.
It’s difficult to talk myself out of this state. I’m not trying to be hopeless; I do not deliberately despair. But the darkness seems so powerful that I am often tempted to give in to it.
For Christians, such a surrender is not an option. In fact, Christians think of despair as a vice—a failure to trust that our Creator loves us and works to rescue us from the dismal tide that threatens to drown everything that is true, good and beautiful. In other words, Christians are called to cultivate the virtue of hope: The resolute and agile disposition that enables us to trust that the Lord is truly good, no matter what.
Cultivating the virtue of hope is not the same as feeling optimistic about the future. The optimist calculates that a good outcome is probable and then feels positive about that probability. I enjoy good outcomes, especially probable ones. But history, the news and my own biography are sufficient proof that good outcomes aren’t reliable enough to rescue me from the dismal tide.
Christian hope does not depend on probable outcomes. It depends on the Lord’s goodness, which is eternal, which is to say, unchanging. That is, Christian hope is a sort of forward looking trust and a divine gift I can welcome, even when a good outcome seems impossible. I appreciate the way Emily Dickinson describes hope. It helps me see the way hope isn’t just a positive mindset, but rather something that is given to me, something I can listen to, and really, someone I can trust.
Here’s Dickinson’s poem:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
For Christians, Dickinson’s image of a bird perching in the soul is especially instructive if we think of the way bird imagery is used in the Gospels. At Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove, and the Father identifies Jesus as the Son in whom the Father is well pleased. And during his final hours with his disciples, Jesus promises that the Spirit will likewise descend on the disciples, preparing a place within them for the Trinity to perch.
At his crucifixion, the Son is not feeling especially close to his Father. Consider Jesus’ words from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the first line of Psalm 22. If you read that psalm and the account of Jesus’ torture and execution, it’s clear that Jesus is not simply feeling optimistic about the probability that his suffering will end soon-ish. But the darkness of Jesus’ suffering sits in contrast with a deeper trust that the Father is good, no matter how far down the Son sinks into the dismal tide. And he sank all the way to the bottom—even down to whatever is beneath the bottom.
Christian hope is rooted in Jesus’ perspective from the Cross. He feels forsaken, but the Spirit remains perched within him as he sails the strange storm of our selfishness, our fear and our violence. And because he is able to hear the tune without words even during the gale, he teaches his disciples how to hope.
For a Christian, my friend’s email signature—“Everything’s Gonna Be Okay”—is not simply a wager that things will turn out alright in the end. It’s a confession that the universe belongs to the good and loving Creator who opens the cage of our soul at our baptism, perches there and sings a free tune that never ends. Perhaps it amounts to the same thing: If the universe belongs to our loving Creator, then things will turn out alright in the end. But even on a good day, I can’t know much about the end of all things, let alone when I’m despairing. What I can do is listen to the song.
