Where
are you just now on the misery-hope index? Why? What spiritual hunger
does that leave you with? On a large scale misery-hope index, how
would you rate your country compared to early Israel? Why that
rating? What can be done about that? What helps you see the light at
the end of the tunnel? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary
Edition, page 1294-5).
Mankind
is in a steady-state of alarm regarding its prognosis for survival.
Every generation finds reason to believe that the end times are near.
I find solace in the following remarks of Socrates (470-399 B.C.):
Our
youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority;
they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of
exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they
contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their
food and tyrannize their teachers.
In
other words, it seems that every generation looks upon the prognosis
for mankind and ends up concluding that disaster is imminent.
In
a sense, perhaps the most dangerous affliction of mankind is the
malady of Pollyanna hope. A constant undertone of dread may be to our
best advantage. My religion, Christianity, embodies both hope and
dread. It finds hope in love and the gift of the Spirit and the
promise of eternal life. Yet, its vision of the end times are dire.
It
seems like much of human history is the equivalent of our undergoing
a long-term multiple-choice exam in which we contemplate an answer
and even invest in it for a time only to find in the end that the
answer is not the best and we must precede forward contemplating and
evaluating other possible answers. I am optimistic for I believe that
love will triumph over despair ultimately and does so presently in
significant ways. The disciplines of love actually work and this
uncompromising practicality gives me hope.
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