Hope, Hoping and Hopeful

Hope is present confidence in a better future.

So hope has some sort of content or subject.  What are the reasons or beliefs that inform my present confidence that the future will be better?  Those reasons or beliefs are the substance of my hope.

Hope also means hoping.  Hoping is not simply wishful thinking or naive speculation.  Hoping is a method--perhaps even a discipline--that connects me over and over with the content or subject of my hope.

And hope rests most easily and fully in a community that shares both the content of the hope and the practice of hoping.  So hope is nurtured best in a sort of group consciousness or community rule.

I'll put it another way.  Hope requires some content or subject beyond me and the present moment.  That content may be metaphysical or theological (or it may not).  But for me, the substance of hope is rooted in a theology.

The method of hope is hard-wired into our neural networks.  So that method can be explored and improved.  For me, hoping is informed by a psychology.  In particular, that psychology is the new positive psychology strongly informed by insights from neuroscience.  We can choose to hope and learn to be more hopeful.

Since hope is rooted in something beyond me, and since hoping can be practiced, hope grows best in the reality of a hopeful community.  Hope, therefore, is sustained through relationships.  We can seek out or form networks of relationships to sustain us in our hope and hoping.

I am a Christian--a Lutheran minister of the gospel, to be more precise and to exercise fuller disclosure.  So the substance of my hope is always the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  This is "the hope that does not disappoint" (Romans 5:5).

I know many who have chosen a different theological (or a-theological) content for their hope.  I can only speak on the basis of the theological substance that makes sense to me.  If you don't share that content with me, I invite you to think about whatever it is that gives you real reasons to have a present confidence in a better future.  And I ask you to engage in this dialogue with as little prejudice and preconception as you can must.

I'll try to do the same.

A word about the web address for this blog ("elpiseklektos")--it is the English translation of New Testament Greek and means something like "hope chosen."