My morning walks take me through a local park. Four diagonal sidewalks lead to a circle around a fountain at the center of the park.
Where one sidewalk ends at the circle, the word “trust” is engraved in the concrete. At another, “love.” At a third, “justice.”
These three line up nicely; there is a straight shot down the sidewalk from each. But not the fourth.
To get to the last, “hope,” you have to make a right-left jog. Hope is out of line.
That indeed seems to be the case these days.
The Middle East, never an oasis of peace, seems ready to explode. The war in Ukraine is no closer to resolution. The political situation in the United States is dire, to put it mildly.
We live in revolutionary times. David Brooks argues we are now living in the middle of a sixth political revolution in the last 150 years: global populism’s revolt against neoliberalism. Fareed Zakaria says political battles today are about whether societies should be open or closed.
Whether they are right in all the details, their analyses reinforce what my church history professor said in seminary: that between stable periods of history, there are long periods of transition that can last as long as 150 to 200 years. These are periods when a culture can no longer take its traditions and practices for granted.
Karl Marx’s statement, “All things solid melt into air,” seems an apt description of such times. And, as Zakaria notes, populism, nationalism and authoritarianism often rush in to fill the void.
My professor reckoned what we now call postmodernity is another one of those transitional eras—and he dated it to the end of World War II. If past is prologue, then we can expect it to take at least another 70 years before a new, stable synthesis emerges!
If he was right, we are currently living in a period of cultural, political, economic and religious upheaval in the West as dramatic as the one between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of a Medieval synthesis—or between the breakdown of that synthesis due to the Renaissance and Reformation.
In revolutionary times, hope does indeed seem out of line. But is it? I think we can sustain (create?) hope—by doing small things.
I find hope by having conversations with students who are willing to start thinking critically and reflectively about things they had taken for granted—and who force me to do the same.
I find hope by participating in a peaceful “No Kings” rally with hundreds of other people.
I find hope by being part of communities of faith that sing, ask honest questions and remind us that our ultimate trust is in God.
I find hope by gathering with friends who share anxieties (along with good music, food and beverages) and encourage one another.
These are small things, to be sure, but systems theory tells us small nudges in complex systems can lead to outsized consequences. In revolutionary times, hope may indeed seem elusive, out of line—wishful thinking even—but small jogs can take us to it.
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Professor of religion in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He is the author of Wisdom Calls: The Moral Story of the Hebrew Bible (Nurturing Faith Books, 2017) and Faithful Innovation: The Rule of God and a Christian Practical Wisdom.
