Editorial: Hope: Is the good news of Jesus just a silver lining?

“Millennials aren’t excited about future plans.”

That statement is startling. It’s also a paraphrase of a lengthier conversation. And it doesn’t necessarily represent every Millennial.

The Millennial it does represent bases her statement on the experience of one significant crisis or catastrophe after another in her lifetime. She started with 9/11, because very few of her generation remember the anticlimactic scare of Y2K.

She then listed things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter stretching an entire generation (2001–2021); Hurricane Katrina (2005); the Great Recession (2008–2009); a string of Black men, women and children killed by police or who died in police custody over a number of years; racially charged protests and counterprotests; a rise in mass shootings, especially in schools and churches; the COVID-19 pandemic; the events of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C.; the war in Ukraine; and high inflation and housing prices right as so many Millennials enter adulthood.

In that sobering moment, my excitement about future plans deflated, too. I mean, a list like that really takes the wind out of the sails.

And yet …

She and I were talking in the context of a conference on addressing these kinds of depressing realities about our world. We were there as ministers and people who believe in and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Is that good news just a silver lining?

Hopelessness in the world

While taking my son to school this morning, I noticed a bumper sticker on the car in front of us: “Giant Meteor 2020: Just End It Already.” How’s that for despair?

Giant Meteor made its first appearance in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, then again in 2020. It’s being offered as a third option in 2022 and 2024. Like it or not, this is where many voters are and have been for at least six years.

What does it say about us that a business can be made off the idea worldwide destruction is preferable to the presidential candidates on offer? While Giant Meteor may be no more than gallows humor, it expresses a degree of despair about our future on Earth.

Do those who believe in and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ have any better hope to offer?

One of the assumptions of this question is we have hope for this world now, not just a deferred hope in the hereafter.

Hope now and then

Our understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ—what we call “the gospel” for short—is built on our understanding of redemption. And here, I take leave of the editorial and dive into the theological.

Do we believe Jesus died and rose again to save only our souls for and in eternity? Or do we believe the salvation we have in Jesus applies to the physical world and our physical bodies in the here and now, as well as for and in eternity? The world is interested in our answer.

If we believe our hope is only for eternity—what we might call a spiritual hope—then there are many in the world, including our children and their children, who find little good news in that. For them, a giant meteor just might be preferable to so much else they see and experience in this world, especially if that giant meteor can get them to eternity faster.

The upside of this belief is it frees us from doing much to embody and enact justice in this world. Just save people’s souls, and our work here is done. Sounds easy enough, but we’re not doing a bang-up job of even the “easy” part.

If we believe our only hope is in and for this world—what we could call a material hope—then so much about our world at present makes a giant meteor very attractive. At a minimum, it makes Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” a ludicrous sentiment.

This is a disturbing thought for those remaining members of the Builder or Greatest Generation—and some Boomers, too—who, despite World War II, saw so much progress during their lifetimes. In fact, that thought seems to be the opposite of hope.

If we believe our hope is not just for eternity but is also for this world here and now—what I will call an incarnational hope—then we have incredibly good news for a world that, by all appearances, is desperate for it.

I call this third option an incarnational hope because it is predicated on the incarnation of Jesus and sealed in his resurrection from death to life. Jesus, being fully God—coequal and eternal—took on human flesh. He was and is God-incarnate—fully God and fully man. No, I don’t understand that.

After living a sinless life, Jesus was crucified and died—hanging until he was dead, dead, dead. He was buried dead. He lay in the grave dead. On the third day, he rose from all-the-way-dead to all-the-way-alive—yes, spiritually and also bodily, as the biblical record and human testimony attest. In him, we have the promise of this same resurrection from death to life. In him, we have a present and a future hope.

There is a catch in an incarnational hope, however, and that catch is two-fold. One, believing in this hope requires us to embody it in the world. Two, this world mitigates against all belief in a present and future hope.

Hope is not just a silver lining

For centuries, followers of Jesus have embodied this hope among orphans, immigrants and refugees; the poor, afflicted and addicted; the battered, worn and overwhelmed; the unclean, sinners and scoundrels. You’d think with all that embodying hope we wouldn’t have to embody it anymore, but this world is pretty broken, and persistently so.

As a result, we must not turn from incarnating this hope now. Not because we are divine; we aren’t. But because “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

These good works we must do, this way of living we must live, is not simply to make the world a better place. We must keep doing these works—embodying this incarnational hope—because they communicate the good news of Jesus isn’t just a silver lining in the clouds. It is a living hope for all of life everywhere, in all times and in all circumstances.

Yes, the times are depressing; so, let’s pull together in this one living hope. When a giant meteor is preferable to presidential candidates on offer, and when the upcoming generations see little promise in the future, the world needs our lived testimony of Jesus’ eternal life now.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those solely of the author.