“Isn’t hope just delusional wishful thinking?”

Question: “Isn’t hope just delusional wishful thinking?”

Hope is as instinctual as breathing, taking your first step, or watching the weather. So it may come as a surprise that there are some who are loosing hope, and others who have thrown it out with the garbage after ripping it out of their hearts.

A person who has given up on hope said this:

“Hope is a disease, a fairy tale, the futile wish of a child praying ‘Make it not so.’ Hope is a sop. Hope is false promises. Hope is an empty fantasy. Hope is the deceit that allows the evils that exist to flourish. Hope is a mask for the horror that is at the core of all that which is real. Hope is a substitute for real planning, and rational assessment and analysis. Hope is unreason pleasantified. Hope doesn't cure diseases... science and hard work does. Hope doesn't grow food or raise children. Hope is the offering of empty hands. If the human race could only eliminate two concepts from its worldview, the best to be eliminated would be "hope" and "belief". To be precise... I try daily to expunge 'hope' and 'belief' and 'faith' and all those other anti-rational *inhuman* concepts from my existence.”

That may be hard for some to hear because we rely on hope so much – OR -- maybe that is the way you really feel sometimes and don’t have the courage or permission to say so. The challenge that comes from a person who is choosing a Star Trek Vulcan life (or Andromeda, Nietzscheans)

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It was the widow with the dead son that said to the prophet Elisha: “Didn't I tell you, 'Don't raise my hopes'?" (2 Kings 4:27-29).

This is the observation of Solomon when he wrote...

12. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12

To kill hope, is to kill longing. To throw out longing is be rid of joy. The experiences of hope must dare disappointments. The experiences of love must risk hate; faith must risk doubt; and peace anticipates conflict.

Answer: “Is an attribute of God, woven into the fabric of everything He created.”

Sometimes the answer is so obvious, but not always welcome. Hope is not something we create but something that we have from our conception. It is greater and more persistent than we are because God created all things with hope. To say you are without hope is to say you are without God. Since Nietzsche rejected God in his “God is dead” movement, he had to logically reject hope. In this sense the great atheist of recent time is absolutely right. God and hope are intrinsically linked.

I would make the argument that hope, like God, is not a fairy tale wishful thought. He is not like Santa Clause that millions of kids will write to this year and ask for a special Christmas gift. Hope, like God’s nature, is all around us, and gives the light of love to every new born child, searching for eyes that love them back.

We are in a season where hope rises and disappointment threatens. We hope this year our family will get along with each other. We hope we won’t be alone and someone will be our friend. We hope that the coming year will be better than the last. Every year that feeling comes back and sometimes we resent the disappointment it may bring.

But let me ask you, between hope and no hope, which would you rather have? The promise is not that this fallen world will give us hope, but to put our hope in Jesus Christ, who in hope risked His life for you. This is a hope that does not disappoint, that Jesus loves us and will see us through and beyond the nightmares of this world, to the waking reality of His love.

...we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Romans 5:3b-5