Mere Hope

Life in an Age of Cynicism

Jason G. Duesing

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781462786626
• Subtopic: Religion

How are Christians to live in such difficult times? Unique of all people, Christians are called to embrace a hopeful outlook on life. Mere Hope offers the core, Christ-centered perspective that all Christians share, and that Christians alone have to offer a world filled with frustration, pain, and disappointment. For those in darkness, despair, and discouragement, for those in the midst of trials, suffering, and injustice, mere hope lives. The spirit of the age is cynicism. When our leaders, our families, and our friends let us down at every turn, this isn't surprising. But we need another perspective; we need hope. Rather than reflecting resigned despair or distracted indifference, author Jason Duesing argues, our lives ought to be shaped by the gospel of Jesus—a gospel of hope.

Chapter One

Mere Hope Lives

Hope does not put us to shame.

—Romans 5:5

An Emblem of Hope

At the end of the first century, Clement of Rome invoked a curious symbol when describing the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Borrowing from ancient legend—though he clearly thought the creature was real—he described the phoenix as “an emblem of our resurrection.”1 Clement was followed by a second-century catalog of creatures, the Physiologus (meaning Naturalist) that included biblical references and commentary for each entry. This work articulated more clearly that the phoenix (like Christ) has the self-sacrificial “power to slay himself and come to life again” and resurrects from the dead “on the third day.”2

These two appropriations of the bird baptized this myth and led other Christians to employ the symbol for education and edification. In the third century, Tertullian referred to the phoenix as an instrument of general revelation God provided as a “complete and unassailable symbol of our hope” in the resurrection.3 In the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem wrote his Catechetical Lectures to train new disciples in the Christian faith. In his lecture on the resurrection he, seemingly believing that the creature exists, though “remote and uncommon,” mentions the phoenix also as an example in nature for the unbelieving world to have a symbol of Jesus’ own resurrection. He states:

The bird . . . makes itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and other spices, and entering into this when its years are fulfilled, it evidently dies and moulders away. Then from the decayed flesh of the dead bird a worm is engendered, and this worm when grown large is transformed into a bird. . . . Afterwards the aforesaid Phoenix, becoming fledged and a full-grown Phoenix, like the former one, soars up into the air such as it had died, shewing forth to men a most evident resurrection of the dead.4

Now, lest we get sidetracked by the Christian usage of a fictional creature, it is helpful to remember the limits of knowledge and etymology in these early centuries. As professor Micah Mattix explains, even though many of these early Christians seem to believe the bird is real, “most of them are less interested in animals as animals and more interested in their symbolic significance.”5 By the Middle Ages the regular use of the phoenix as a Christian “resurrection bird” faded, but throughout other forms of literature,6 the avian myth appears to convey and remind of Christian hope. To name two of the most popular, in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, a phoenix resides in a silver apple tree, the fruit which gives life, in the creator Aslan’s garden. And, in the twenty-first century, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter employs a phoenix to convey themes of resurrection, hope, self-sacrifice, and healing.

What I love about the image of a phoenix—and I suspect it is what our friends in the early church loved as well—is that just at the darkest moment, when you think this majestic creature has died or given its life for another, it is reborn, returning to life. Just as Jesus said, “I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17). Only through the death of the phoenix do we see an even more glorious life—through its suffering and demise, it finds victory.

The Christian use of the phoenix serves as a fitting emblem for what I call mere hope.

Thus, the Christian use of the phoenix serves as a fitting emblem for what I call mere hope. The foundation of our hope rose from the ashes of death; “something greater than the phoenix is here” (see Matt. 12:41). This mere hope is good news, for ours is a cynical age without much hope.

An Age of Cynicism

When I was young, faced with washing dishes or some other such chore, my siblings and I would wonder when science would catch science fiction and our home would function like The Jetsons, where everything was automated awesomeness. In the decades since then, our world does indeed resemble the dreams of yesterday’s science fiction, but it has also traveled further into dystopia. As one columnist wrote, “In contrast to science fiction tales set in fantastical futures on distant planets, dystopian novels take the anxieties of people on earth and amplify them.”7 With instant global interconnectedness alerting us to all forms of tragedy and conflict, our society appears to have defaulted either to resigned despair or distracted indifference. When regularly our leaders disappoint us by their actions and their human flaws are flouted and magnified due to our relentless and merciless scrutiny, it’s easy to see why many have come to a collective understanding that no one can stand with a message of hope. Once a small genre of fiction literature, dystopian-themed novels, games, and movies seem now to be the predominant world in which entertainment takes place, and increasingly the real world as well. Hope, rather than dystopia, is the fiction of our day. What happened?

In the process of avoiding the anxiety of a Big Brother governmental takeover like in George Orwell’s 1984, society instead followed Neil Postman’s prediction that we would amuse ourselves to death. And, with anxiety and amusement gone, only cynicism remains. In 2015, composer Mohammed Fairouz wrote, “The age of anxiety has given way to the age of cynicism. Among my generation, cynicism is no longer a bad word: it’s being celebrated, and it is often mistaken for intelligence.” The age of cynicism, Fairouz continues, is where “it is better to be wry and distrustful than to be open and trusting.”8

Luis Navia, in his critical study of classical cynicism, explains that in modern times a cynical person is:

someone who rejects ethical values and ideals . . . and who reacts skeptically and sarcastically to even the most innocent and well-intentioned human actions. For such a person, most if not all human activities are suspect and unworthy of trust, since no one, according to the cynic, ever seeks or pursues anything except for the specific yet often secret purpose of benefitting himself. For the cynic, accordingly, hypocrisy and deceitfulness, primitive selfishness and unbounded egotism, and gross materialism and disguised ruthlessness are the hidden characteristics of all human behavior. Hence, the cynic does not believe in ideals or lofty aspirations, which are in his mind only linguistic and behavioral games promoted for the purpose of manipulating and duping people, or ways to hide the enormous state of confusion that permeates the average human consciousness.9

In addition to these active characteristics of a cynical age, I think there are passive characteristics as well. As we have seen, active cynicism is essentially a functional, if not actual, atheism, where the ultimate end is despair and hopelessness. Passive cynicism is subtler, but perhaps more common. Passive cynicism is more of an idle indifference to the world and the people in it. Here the focus is more on oneself and the ultimate end is elusive or even ignored, often reflected in the common vernacular of the day, “whatever.” The passive cynic is like the infamous literary figure Don Quixote, who is impulsive, acts without thought to consequence, and can spend time and energy fighting imagined enemies or tilting at windmills. The passive cynic is a day-trader only focusing on or reacting to the temporal, the shiny, or the loud. In either case, the notion of biblical hope is scoffed at or ignored.

However, Christians should take heed, for we, as those living in this world, are prone to bend toward it. Often, the pull toward cynicism is easier to follow than the struggle to resist. Sarcasm comes too easy, complaining is default small-talk, and despair can mark us more than joy. We might refer to the “Evangelical Cynic” to describe the active voice and the “Evangelical Stoic” to describe the passive.

How are we, as Christians, to live in such times? This book is my attempt to answer that question. But first I want to assert, right into the jungle of cynicism that so easily entangles, that mere hope lives.

Mere Hope Lives

“Frodo Lives!” While traveling a New York subway or the sidewalks of London in the 1960s, you might have come across this exclamation written in chalk (or something more permanent)—but like most passersby, you would not have known what it meant. Following the publication of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 1950s, a growing number of readers developed an attachment and affinity for the epic fantasy, but the novels had not yet achieved the widespread success they have today.

The initial rise in popularity came only after paperback...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Chapter One Mere Hope Lives
• Chapter Two Look Down Mere Hope’s Foundation
• Chapter Three Look In Mere Hope’s Fountain
• Chapter Four Look Out Mere Hope’s Flourishing
• Chapter Five Look Up Mere Hope’s Focus
• Chapter Six Living Mere Hope
• Notes