Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why those looking for “hope” after Election Day should rethink what we want … How an eight years’ younger version of me thought the “Religious Right” could be “saved” … What it takes to “detox” from screens … Why are there so many “scare quotes” in this intro? … a Desert Island Playlist and wisdom from Waylon … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
Election Day Can Help Break Our Addiction to Hope
Whatever our political views, those of us who care about America are apprehensive about Election Day. We face the specter of an ever-widening divide, with even the possibility of violence on the horizon.
A friend of mine, a public policy expert, recently talked about the anxiety that comes with constantly hearing the predictions, constantly watching often-contradictory polling numbers. “I guess I should just look for the ‘hopium’ that people are talking about,” she said. I could relate to that.
By “hopium,” she means the tongue-in-cheek label for curating news that offers reassurance of how everything is going to turn out all right. The metaphor works—especially in the context of a country plagued with opiate addiction—because there’s a kind of “hope” that is meant to numb us, to distract us from thinking about what could be a bleak future.
And Election Day is, in some ways, just a stand-in for even deeper fears and misgivings about what might be lurking around the corner—pandemics, world wars, ecological disaster, artificial intelligence catastrophes, who knows?
With the election and other things, I tend to default to convincing myself of the worst possible outcome—say, a 269–269 electoral tie that takes an already angry and exhausted public to the brink. But that’s kind of a counter-label hopium too, trying to forestall bad things by imagining them so that anything better is a welcome surprise.
Many Christians, when asking me about the aftermath of the election (however it turns out), say, “Can you give us some hope?” Often, what these Christians actually want is hopium—a way of saying, after all the division and scandal of the past decade, that something will happen that will put everything back together again. In their churches or families or in the country, they want things to return to the way it was in 2010 or 2015.
In one sense, then, perhaps the most hopeful thing I could say in the lead-up to Election Day is to encourage you to lose hope.
Many are familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “cheap grace.” The first thing we must recognize if we understand what he meant is that cheap grace is not “too much grace.” Grace is inexhaustible and unquantifiable. Cheap grace is no grace at all.
The kind of grace that calls for no repentance or transformation doesn’t ultimately work, even for the purposes of reassurance. Our consciences know—however deeply we bury that awareness—that we need something more than the superficial. We need the kind of grace that really knows us, in all our transgression, and says anyway, “You are forgiven.”
“Cheap hope” works the same way. It’s actually not hope. It’s a hopioid.
Søren Kierkegaard warned that introducing Christianity to a culture where everyone is a “Christian” will feel, at first, like taking Christianity away. Similarly, introducing hope as just a sunnier form of despair will feel, at first, like losing hope.
Hope is, of course, a Christian virtue (1 Cor. 13:13). But, as with grace, the Bible defines hope by contrasting it with what it is not. The apostle Paul wrote, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:24–25, ESV throughout). In calling us to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God,” Paul wrote that hope comes about in ways few of us define as “hopeful”—through suffering that produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope (5:2–4).
There’s a certain kind of Christian who drinks coffee from a mug with Jeremiah 29:11 on it: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope”—and that’s good. There’s another kind of Christian who often quotes a few verses before that: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (v. 7)—and that’s good too.
And yet neither of those verses—one giving hope to our faith, the other to our work—can be understood without the chapter before it. There, we see two prophets dueling it out. Hananiah is the messenger of “hope.” Within two years, he said, God will break the rule of the Babylonian invaders and will restore all the stolen vessels back to the temple. Jeremiah seems to be the “hopeless” one. He says:
Amen! May the Lord do so; may the Lord make the words that you have prophesied come true, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the Lord, and all the exiles. Yet hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet. (28:6–9)
Hananiah offered hopium. Jeremiah offered the only kind of hope God gives—the kind that goes the long way around, through the valley of the shadow of death, through the way of the cross. Hananiah’s kind of hope would be, “Hold on; this is almost over, and you can go back to normal.” Jeremiah offers a different kind of “a future and a hope”: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord” (29:13–14).
That kind of hope is what enables us to exhale and trust and even rejoice—because it tells us the truth. Our situation, in every era from Eden to now, is even worse than it appears. But Jesus. And that’s what’s most important about a Christian view of the future, a Christian kind of hope. “The future” has a name: Jesus of Nazareth. Hope is not an argument but a person.
Real hope often finds us pointing right in front of us, saying, “I don’t exactly know where we’re going, but God does, and I’m with him.” Left to ourselves, the kind of faith we want is just sight. The kind of love we want is just affirmation. And the kind of hope we want is whatever we think best working itself out somehow.
Hopium, however we curate it for ourselves, is really just another kind of despair. Let’s let go of it. We don’t need it.
We can see backward—to the cloud of witnesses and martyrs who told us the truth. We can see way, way forward—to the wiping away of all tears. We just can’t see right ahead of us. But we know that whatever happens, just like in the far past and in the far future, underneath are the everlasting arms.
Those who would save their lives must lose it, Jesus told us. And those who would find hope must lose that too. That’s true on Election Day and on Judgment Day, and on every day in between.
Can the Religious Right Be Saved?
I realized, seeing my Timehop social media app today, that this week is eight years since I delivered the 2016 Erasmus Lecture in New York City for First Things magazine.
It was a tense time. I was one of the very small band who did not agree with the majority of my fellow so-called “white evangelicals” about the presidential election—and that would become the case even after the election was over.
I said then that the fundamental question for those of us who are conservatives was what we ought to be attempting to conserve. For me, then and now, the answers are: first, our gospel fidelity; and second, our moral integrity. Without those things, we have nothing at all to offer the world, or even to the next generation of the church.
The address closed with these words:
The religious right can be saved, but not by tinkering around the edges. Religious conservatives will need a robust religion and a sense of what is, in fact, to be conserved. This will mean abandoning an idea of a “moral majority” or a “silent majority” within the nation. … We will need to build collaborative majorities, often issue by issue. It will mean institutions that have the vision, and the financial resources, to play a long game of cultural renewal, rather than allowing themselves to be driven by the populist passions of the moment.
More than that, it will mean a religious conservatism that sees the Church as more important than the state, the conscience as more important than the culture, and one that knows the difference between the temporal and the eternal. We will make mistakes. We will need course corrections. We must remind ourselves that we are not inquisitors but missionaries, that we can be Americans best when we are not Americans first.
[But] we must always keep in mind that we are being overheard, in our statements and in our silences. Somewhere out there, there’s a young Augustine with pear-stained hands, a young John Newton with receipts for what he paid to own human beings, a young C. S. Lewis arguing against the existence of God, a young Chuck Colson with metaphorical tire-tracks over his metaphorical grandmother in service to some politician, a young fifteen-year-old whose name we’ll never know wondering if he’s lost in the cosmos.
The important question is not whether the religious right can be saved, but whether they can be. The important question is whether the religious right has for them that word above all earthly powers, which, no thanks to them, abideth. The important question is whether a right, defined by religion, has for the world good news.
Is It Possible to Detox from Screens?
Carlos Whittaker is an author, podcaster, and global speaker who is backed by, as he puts it, “the power of a massive Instafamilia.” Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that when he decided to spend 23 hours a day in silence at a Benedictine monastery, he experienced physical detoxification symptoms—including heart palpitations.
On this week’s episode of the podcast, I talk to him about what he learned in the monastery—and in an Amish community—about how much his devices controlled him, and how we can get a handle on it ourselves (without becoming monks).
You can listen here.
Desert island Playlist
Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This week’s submission comes from reader Dallas Johnson from Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
- “Love Can Make You Happy” by Mercy: Simple song with offbeat keyboard chords, great words, soothing harmonies, great sing-along.
- “My Girl” by The Temptations: Great guitar riff, brass, strings, great lead, Motown harmonies.
- “Happy Together” by The Turtles: Can’t sing this without bobbing your head with a smile on your face.
- “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds: Great guitar riff, great (biblical) words, gotta love the harmonies.
- “When Will I See You Again” by The Three Degrees: Love the heartbeat percussion, strings, horns, harmony.
- “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong: Louie! Perfect song for his soulful voice, full of thankfulness.
- “Wake Up Sunshine” by Chicago: Great horns as always, harmonies; all alarm clocks should play this.
- “Mornin’ Beautiful” by Tony Orlando & Dawn: Soaring strings, smooth lead, gliding harmonies, Latin beat.
- “Life Is Good” by Kenny Chesney: Feel-good song with a bit of a country twang.
- “Top of the World” by the Carpenters: A rare upbeat Carpenters song, Karen’s incomparable vocals, & overdubs with brother Richard.
- “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts: Great never-give-up song, trusting in God’s guidance, well sung lead & background vocals.
- “Somebody Like You” by Keith Urban: Another great don’t-give-up song, Keith’s great banjo work, toe-tappin’, head-bobbin’ music.
Thank you, Dallas!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.”
—Waylon Jennings
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive (Zondervan)
- Seth Godin, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Authors Equity)
- Clarissa Moll and Fiona Moll, Hurt Help Hope: A Real Conversation About Teen Grief and Life After Loss (Tyndale Wander)
- William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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