Unknown Hope

If all you hope for is what you want, you don’t have much hope. Most of our wants are from the ego-centered self which dreams of arranging everything for its satisfaction. The Greeks warned that getting what you want, as seen in the tale about King Midas and his golden touch, is not as good as one might think.

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. Galatians 5:17

The real dilemma is that my non-Spirit-derived longings do not appear to me to be a trap, at least not initially. In fact, these hopes often seem to me like the very expression of God’s will for me. Though I rarely find anything wrong with what I hope for, the content of my desires is where change needs to occur.

Part of our personal transformation is learning to not want what we typically desire, but to seek the unknown possibilities which would really satisfy. Our usual desires are too limited to give us true and enduring (eternal) life. 

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

As Peter declares, the not-at-all-virtuous longings that are common within me (sinful desires) war against who I actually am (soul). What I want in my self-serving impulses is ultimately self-destructive, rather than freeing or enriching. The limited future I humanly hope for, long for, and desire, is fundamentally incompatible with a much better possibility, but one which I cannot see or even imagine.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Romans 4:18

Abraham is the model of hoping in a way that is a complete renunciation of what is reasonable or seems possible. His “hope against all hope” was trusting in what lies beyond plausible human thinking. He hoped for the unheard of.

By reaching all the way back to Abraham, Paul is making it clear that this type of hope in the unthinkable has always been the way to live with God. If we can fully comprehend what we are hoping for, our hope is too small to be what the Spirit gives.

In Christ, we long for an inexpressible “union with God” that cannot be defined or adequately described. Though we call this state of oneness and life with God “heaven”,  its reality is beyond knowing, except by experience.

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10

God reveals by the Spirit not what no one has seen, heard, or conceived, as if now we know. What is revealed is that God plans for his beloved ones more than we can imagine. The Spirit is telling us to hope in a more beautiful future than can be named. This should not surprise us, for the Spirit ultimately moves in realms beyond words (Romans 8:26). 

The reason I sometimes say things like “whatever comes next” or “the life to come, whatever that means” is not that I am unaware of the descriptions of heaven in scripture (or hell, for that matter), but because I view those as poetic images to intrigue our imaginations and teach us. The realities are beyond words, just as our feeble attempts to speak of God always fall short.

Our sinful desires are well-defined in our minds. The desires of the Spirit are not just a switch to other well-defined, godly longings, though this change may be a start. Ultimately, the move is to a humble unknowing hope that trusts in what we know not.

If we detach our hope from what we find personally appealing for an openness to the unfathomable goodness of God, our hope is in the unknown. Here, we hope against all the hope that can be conceived in the human heart, and instead are waiting for what will be revealed.