In Defense of Hope

"The world doesn't need anymore great men, the world has had enough great men; what the world needs is a God."


Quick Note

This is a long post, so I put headers to each of the sections so you can easily skim over the boring parts if you feel so inclined. :D  And, Ironically enough, I've given up on finishing this post, so I'm just posting it as is. Also, I found a marvelous talk by Elder Maxwell that pretty much sums up everything I was trying to say about a hundred times more eloquently, so if you want, here's the link.

A Story

When the earth was still young and Man had no Women, Zeus created a Woman to torment man.  He named the first Woman Pandora, and gave her a box, which she was instructed never to open.  Being a Woman, however, curiosity got the better of her and she lifted the lid: before she could close it again out flew all the evils that now plague the world -- death, sickness, birth, diseases of all kinds, pain and cruelty -- all according to the plan of a vengeful god.  But before the very last evil flew out she flung herself upon the lid and trapped one last flying creature.  She looked in the box, and Hope remained.

I used to think this was a beautiful story conveying through metaphor the idea that no matter what evil is released into the world there is still some spark of light, some goodness to be found - Hope remained. Then I actually read the story of Pandora and discovered otherwise.  As Nietzsche said "Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it...Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that the jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good—it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."

This perception of Hope is more prominent than I would have ever thought, until just recently that is. I have never had my belief in Hope challenged before, and I never anticipated having it challenged -- Hope is inherently valuable, it's worth is self-evidently beyond dispute: or so I thought.  In the last two days I've had two people, who are very close to me, tell me that Hope is useless, weak, and childish.  It broke my heart. But it proved to be a useful wake-up call; the first time I couldn't actually defend Hope, or say why it was so important, so powerful, or so necessary -- I didn't actually know what hope was (which was relatively shocking to me, because I've claimed Hope as my mission statement for years.  I thought I was an expert on Hope.)  So I've studied some, and have came up with some answers as to what Hope is, and why it's power is so necessary.  Hence the title: In Defense of Hope.

Another Story 
(Or perhaps the same one from a different perspective...but that's a post for another time.)

In the Beginning God created the Earth, and all things that in her are, and He saw man, that he was alone -- so God created an Help Meet for him.  God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but Eve partook and brought into the world all the evils that now are -- death, sickness, the travails of birth, diseases and sickness, pain and cruelty. All according to the plan of an all-knowing, loving Father.  But along with death came the promise of Eternal life, and the opportunity to become like God -- along with death, for all of God's children came Hope.

"If Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.  But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.  Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. And the Messiah cometh in the fullness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall."  Thus Christ became the Hope of Israel, and of all men.  

Hope Wothout Faith

In April 1976 General Conference, then Elder Monson stated the following in reference to this picture, titled "A Hopeless Dawn"

For her and many others who have loved and lost dear ones, each dawn is hopeless. Such is the experience of those who regard the grave as the end and immortality as but a dream. 

The famed scientist, Madame Marie Curie, returned to her home the night of the funeral for her husband, Pierre Curie, who was killed in an accident in the streets of Paris, and made this entry in her diary: 

“They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it. Everything is over. Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth; it is the end of everything, everything, everything.” (Vincent Sheehan, trans., Madame Curie: A Biography by Eve Curie, Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1943, p. 249.) 

The atheist, Bertrand Russell, adds his testament: “No fire, no heroism, no integrity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.” And Schopenhauer, the German philosopher and pessimist, was even more bitter. He wrote: “To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.” 

In reality, every thoughtful person has asked himself the universal question, best phrased by the venerable, perfect, and upright man named Job, who, centuries ago, asked: “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14.) Through inspiration from on high, Job answered his own question: 

“Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! 

“That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! 

“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. … 

“In my flesh shall I see God.” (Job 19:23–26.) 

Few statements in scripture reveal so clearly a divine truth as does Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:22.) (1976 April General Conference, Hopeless Dawn—Joyful Morning, Sat. Morning Session - Thomas S. Monson)

 “What is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ” (Moro. 7:40–4) This, to me, is the essence of Hope: that God suffered for our sins, that He laid down His life so we might live again.  It is the kind of Hope described by Noah Webster in his 1828 dictionary:  "A Strong and Confident Expectation...To trust with confident expectation of good...Hope always gives pleasure or joy...The highest degree of well-founded expectation of good...Grounded on substantial evidence."

Without a God to atone for our sins and to offer us the promise of eternal life there is no reason for Hope, and there is nothing substantial to Hope in -- Hope is useless, weak, and childish: it has no practical use, no positive outcome. Supposing, for a moment, that there is no God, what would one Hope for, what would one Hope in?  Well, men might hope for world peace, or one might have hope in a friend - that they will be there when they need them. And to what avail? None. That hope, in and of itself, accomplishes nothing but to help the person have a more positive attitude -- which in some, arguably many, cases leads to inaction or foolish action: for instance if someone has hope in their own strength it may lead them into unwise skirmishes or fights.  This hope may be reasonable, they may have been in fights before where they came out on top because of their strength; but either way, to go into a fight, or to draw the analogy on a larger scale, to go into a war hoping in the virtue of your own strength is useless, foolish, and childish. 

But there is a God and not only does He bring Hope, He has commanded us to Hope for Eternal Life, to Hope for a remission of our sins, to Hope in Christ.   Thus we see that Hope without Faith is vain, and just as Hope without Faith is vain, even so, as Mormon taught, you cannot have Faith without Hope.

Symptoms of Hope

Paul, when describing the armor of God likened the Hope of Salvation to a helmet.  I think it's significant, perhaps even ironic, that Hope is what he saw most fit to protect our head -- the seat of thought, logic, and reason, the governing organ of all our actions. 

Mormon taught that it is by Hope that we are purified, even as Christ is Pure, and by Hope that we may have the Faith to see Him as He is.

Paul and Ether both preached that Hope is an Anchor to the souls of men, "which would make them firm and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."  (That's pretty hardcore, if you ask me...Unless your definition of hardcore is ninja-type-things that appeal to 8 year old boys...)

A Word Concerning Definitions

I realize that because of our language, and the versatility of words, some may quibble with the definitions I've chosen to include and to postulate, saying that Hope is nothing more than wishful thinking, i.g. I hope my little brother will stop making that terribly annoying noise, or, I hope that I can marry Johnny Depp one day! etc.  Yes, we use the word Hope and wish interchangeably sometimes, but that is what I call Falsehope. As President Uchtdorf said in my favorite conference talk of all time -- The Infinite Power of Hope -- 

"The complexities of language offer several variations and intensities of the word hope. For example, a toddler may hope for a toy phone; an adolescent may hope for a phone call from a special friend; and an adult may simply hope that the phone will stop ringing altogether.  I wish to speak today of the hope that transcends the trivial and centers on the Hope of Israel, the great hope of mankind, even our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  Hope is not knowledge,  but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us. It is confidence that if we live according to God’s laws and the words of His prophets now, we will receive desired blessings in the future. It is believing and expecting that our prayers will be answered. It is manifest in confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and patient perseverance."

And a Random Painting
That doesn't really fit with the rest of the article, but I liked it.

"with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God ... To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope ... that's the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt's painting."-- Jeremiah Wright
 According to Watts [the painter], "Hope need not mean expectancy. It suggests here rather the music which can come from the remaining chord".

4 Skills of Successful People

I got this little blurb in an email update from one of the many random sites I decided to sign up for email updates from.  This one specifically was from Uncollege, a group dedicated to helping people find alternatives to a standard college education.  I thought it was an interesting list of skills needed for success that others might find helpful/interesting.  Also, I wanted to hear your thoughts. The group is decidedly liberal (you know, that whole hippy-homeschooler genre) but they have a l lot of interesting things to say.  As I was reading through the first two "skills" I thought "Man, I have this in the bag!!" Then I read the next two...turns out my bag has wholes :)

4 (More) Important Skills For Hackademics [people creating their own education] to Develop
By Jean Fan

About a year ago, I published a piece on the UnCollege site called 4 Important Skills for Hackademics to Develop. The four skills I listed were writing, coding, networking, and thinking entrepreneurially. At the time, I thought those were the key skills people needed in order to be successful. Each of them has very practical applications, and I believed that the combination of them would ensure that you never had trouble marketing yourself. 

What I (and the rest of the team) realize now, at the end of the first phase in our inaugural Gap Year program, is that there are even more fundamental skills that people need to be successful — crucial meta skills that I glossed over before. I realized that not everyone needs to write, code, network, and think entrepreneurially in order to succeed.

Then what do hackademics need?

1. The ability to be self-aware

I spend a lot of time thinking about myself. Specifically, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’ve done, what I’ve learned, and what I want to do. This ability to analyze my life has been instrumental to my success —the small amount of success that I’ve achieved so far, that is. 

It began, and always does, with the question: “Why?”

Why am I doing what I am doing? This is a question that I ask myself almost every day. I ask this question of myself to make sure I’m doing the right work. I ask this question of myself when I’m doing things that I don’t actually enjoy. I ask this question when I feel myself experiencing happiness or sadness or frustration. 

Question everything, Immanuel Kant once said. 

Understanding the “why” behind what you do means that you can properly tell your story later on, whether you need to explain your reasoning behind dropping out of college or sticking with that job or giving all of your things away to travel the world. You need to understand why, before you can explain it to other people. Therefore, self-awareness is key to effectively promoting yourself. For hackademics, effectively promoting yourself is key to success.

2. The ability to treat everything as a learning experience

As a community of people who have opted out of the traditional education system (either permanently or temporarily), we recognize that learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom. So where does it happen? 

Learn happens when we work, intern, or volunteer. Learning happens as we engage with other people in conversation, whether that’s the knowledge we gain or the social awareness we develop.

Learning happens as we live our day-to-day lives. Instead of separating learning from working or from living, we should treat every experience as one that we can learn and grow from. 

Living life like this is a great way to be optimistic. You can never really lose, because you’re always gaining knowledge and wisdom. Take every situation — good or bad — and ask yourself: “What can I learn from this?” You’ll find that you develop a much more positive outlook on life. At the same time, you’ll become a dramatically improved person.

3. The ability to maintain your well-being

At the Under 20 Summit in New York City last weekend, my friend Dany led a great breakout session on maximizing your mental and physical performance. He talks about the basics: drinking more water, sleeping regularly, exercising, and understanding your mind.

“When I dropped out of college to live and work on my own for the first time,” Dany says, “my attitude towards food changed. I discovered that my lethargy was caused by my eating habits... Nutrition plays a massive role in our lives. [Learn] how you can use the science to get up easier in the morning, be less stressed, and concentrate better.”

What I’ve realized in these past few years, as I’m studying the habits of the most successful people, is that most of them are also very healthy. Part of me is very intimidated by that. Not only is someone a professional rockstar, they also have a kick-[butt] body?! Unfair. 

What I’ve missed, and what Dany’s session reminded me of, is how closely interlinked the two realms of success truly are. In order to be professionally successful, you have to make sure you are building a foundation of physical success — or else you’ll never be able to reach your true potential.

4. The ability to disappoint people (especially people you care about)

For me, those people are my parents. As first-generation immigrants who both have doctorates, they were not very happy when I became involved with UnCollege. In fact, they were quite upset — especially because I started working here just as I began applying to university. My family life during my senior year of high school was turbulent.

Yet I continued working at UnCollege anyways.

Why? It was something that I deeply cared about, and its vision makes sense to me. I recognized that UnCollege was promoting a dramatic shift in paradigm, and I anticipated pushback. I realized that taking an unconventional path will inevitably make the people around you emotionally distressed — whether because it forces them to rethink their own lives, or because they are deeply invested in you and can’t bear to watch you fail.

There were moments in my past when I distinctly remember thinking to myself, ”My life could be so much easier if I just did what people expect of me.”

Then I remember that I only have this one life. I have to be selfish. I can spend it living to appease the needs of everyone around me, but I choose to live it in a way that satisfies me.

Beauty

Art has always been my dear friend, and beauty nearly a way of life for me - something I’ve regarded as inherently good and precious, and as such whenever anyone else sees and loves beauty as much as I do, or recognizes the beauty that I have purposefully created they are at once endeared to me.  The other day I was doodling in my sketch book with a soft charcoal pencil, making smooth, blended, dark lines and curves - because I liked how they felt - when my friend commented how much he liked them and inquired after what they were to be. It usually annoys me when people ask those kinds of questions when I’m drawing - I wonder, when God was forming the earth did all the angels ask ‘What’s that? How does that support life? Why the random plant? Are you done yet? What’s it going to look like when it’s finished?’ Or did they watch in wonder as He created and say ‘Ah, that’s a beautiful line.’ Or ‘Oh, is that the shape of the place we’re to live? It’s magnificent; and the way it ties in with the shape of the orbit, the balance simplicity of it’s harmonies are lovely.’ - they were drawn because I like them, and they give me joy. so I said rather condescendingly, “A line. And a shape, I guess. I didn’t really intend for them to be anything.” To which he replied “Well I like them; they’re nice.” I realized then that he saw exactly and all that was intended to be conveyed in those simple drawings; Beauty. For the sake of itself, and nothing else.  Beauty, because it makes me happy; he felt that and it made him happy, too. Beauty, because it reflected in its simplicity and in its own small way the glory of God.

I have been struggling for some while now to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to the definition of Beauty - not beauty that is in the eye of the beholder, but a true or absolute beauty, as it were; for a long while I’ve believed there is such a thing as Absolute Beauty, just as there is Absolute Truth, but the defining of it has escaped me.

C.S.Lewis describes Joy as that sensation one feels when looking at the magnificence of a sunset and wanting to claim it, to grasp, or internalize it - only to find the feeling gone before it came: or the profuond rapture of listening to Flight of the Valkeries for the first time and feeling a longing for something utterly intangible - like the memory of a memory. I have thought before that Lewis’s Joy is connected with the definition of Absolute Beauty that I’d been searching for, because I always felt Joy while experiencing beauty.  He said that this feeling is, as it were, a memory of Heaven and the Absolute Beauty there.

It wasn’t until I started reading Anne of Green Gables that I found words to put that definition into, though: Anne was so enraptured by beauty wherever she saw it, and that beauty made her want to be good - and while the sentiments she shared may have been expressed melodramatically they were sincere and they came from her heart. When she’s first coming to Green Gables she drives past "the Avenue" and says:

‘Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough...It just satisfied me here’ -- she put a hand on her breast -- ‘It made a queer funny ache, and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr Cuthbert?’

‘Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had.’

‘I have it lots of times whenever I see something royally beautiful.’

Later, when Marilla is teaching her to say her prayers Anne tells her that it is so difficult to be good because God gave her red hair, and she resents Him for that.

‘It would be so much easier to be good if one’s hair was a handsome auburn, don’t you think?’

She didn’t feel beautiful, or believe she was, so she wasn’t able to feel kinship with the God that created her to be that way.

a girl who cared nothing of God’s love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love

After she’s attempted her first prayer she explains to Marilla her philosophies of praying, how she’d rather feel a prayer than say one, and how she would do it after gazing on the beauty of nature -- and she tells us later that beautiful things make her want to pray.  Beauty made Anne want to be good, and the beauty of the language and ideas in the book made me want to be good -- because it was beautiful

From my experiences reading Anne of Green Gables I came to a definition that, for the time being, satiates the seeming unanswerableness of the question of Absolute Beauty:

Absolute Beauty is that which manifests or reflects the Glory of God and His creations or Divine laws. Something is beautiful when it is a conduit for the Light of Christ.

The Beauty of Nature testifies of Christ, the Beauty of friendships and love is a reflection of God’s love and the Covenants we make with Him to serve our fellow man, the beauty of language is a manifestation or reflection of His words that created the Heavens and Earth, the beauty of the human figure testifies of Christ because we were literally created in His image, the beauty in music is a manifestation of Divine order in the Universe and it’s laws - all of which is achieved through the light of Christ.

Beauty is just as vital to our soul as food is to our bodies -- without it the soul withers and dies.  And in Like manner when the spirit dies, cut off from the presence of God, we lose the ability to find beauty.  Charles Darwin, towards the end of his life wrote:

Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare.... formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music.... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.... The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.9

President Brigham Young spoke to the Saints of his day.

“There is a great work for the Saints to do.  Progress, and improve upon and make beautiful everything around you. Cultivate the earth, and cultivate your minds. Build cities, adorn your habitations, make gardens, orchards, and vineyards, and render the earth so pleasant that when you look upon your labors you may do so with pleasure, and that angels may delight to come and visit your beautiful locations. In the mean time continually seek to adorn your minds with all the graces of the Spirit of Christ.”

President Uchtdorf taught

“Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLlnq5yY7k)

This last Summer I worked at a clothing store for Carol Tuttle, who focuses on helping women feel beautiful.  One day I heard her say “getting up everyday and taking the time to dress in your energy type [or the ways that make you feel most beautiful] is a way of nurturing yourself.  Women have an inherent beauty “sixth sense” as she called it -- it is one of our most fundamental inborn gifts; to love and desire to create beauty.  As we create that beauty on ourselves we create on ourselves, or make our physical appearance, a conduit for, or reflection of the Light and Glory of God.  Our bodies are created in His image.

Now, let me make a very clear distinction here: Beauty and Sex appeal are not the same thing - the fact that something pleases the carnal senses does not automatically qualify it to be called Beauty; however we are given “feminine graces” for a reason, and when used in the way God ordained, they can be Beautiful.  Women were meant to be beautiful, we are beautiful, and when we stop worrying about our red hair and take the time to cultivate our relationship with God, to remember we were created in the image of God and given the special gift to create Beauty and manifest the Glory of God, then we can feel just how Beautiful we really are; and that beauty can lead others to Christ.

When presented that way, doesn’t it make it a little less cliche, and much more profound when people say “True Beauty comes from within” or “the most Beautiful adornment you can possess is the Light of Christ.”?