HOPE III: Faith, Hope and Love

Hope opens our eyes, ears, arms, mind and heart.

This is the third of a series of blogs on Hope (hope for energy to do what must be done – together – to foster a creative renewal of our disappearing church).

In 1 Corinthians 13 we read that the three abiding graces are Faith, Hope and Love.   Faith could be understood as the spiritual dimension of our belief systems, love as our daily-life connections with family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and God -- and when we face difficult times, our hope can be understood as a gateway to positive outcomes from both our faith and our love. 

So what is it about hope that makes it a gateway to more helpful discussions of our disappearing church?  After all, we don’t normally think of hope as a path or an entry.  We may consider hope as a way of thinking, “I am hoping that during my next mammogram, there are no new shadows that looks suspicious to the radiologist.”  And we may consider hope as a way feeling, “Because I have such caring friends, I have hope that they will respond with continuing support if my cancer returns, and that makes me feel more at ease and less stressed.”

The academic field of positive psychology has published many research studies that identify the role of positive emotions (such as hope/hopeful) in increasing people’s well-being.  For me the key research studies are coming from the laboratories of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina.  Dr. Fredrickson’s work enables us to understand how positive emotions open up our mind to a broadening of our perceptions of available resources and they give us an expanded acceptance of new, creative ways of thinking about “solutions”. 

With the emotional sense of hope that can accompany new realistic possibilities for cures, relief or solutions, also comes new energy -- we find a new vitality that we didn’t have before to “do what needs to be done”.  Together, our new energy plus our new openness to alternative possibilities, open the gates for walking along new pathways – say for finding new, creative approaches to address our disappearing church.

As we face difficulties of any kind, most of us tend to draw on our own tried and true experiences as we seek solutions to problems.  We call for “bigger hammers” (what we have done before) when the troubles become more difficult.  That is, we do more of what we think will make a difference based on our past beliefs and expectations.  If our church is loosing members, we may first think that we need to increase our emphasis on the spiritual needs of potential congregation members.  If that does not work, we may become “dispirited” and actually quit trying to do much of anything – developing a sense of despair and hopelessness.

To the extent to which old ways of thinking may have been a barrier to new perspectives, then anything that opens our eyes, ears, arms, mind and heart to new approaches can be helpful.  With a contagious sense of hope that comes from new real possibilities to stem a loss of members can come the congregational energy to do what needs to be done.

For example, if through a renewed sense of hope we remove blinders that kept us from seeing that our daily psychological lives and our faith in God, are connected parts of the same picture, then perhaps we can truly find new, successful ways to address psychological reality of prospective parishioners as a part of our interest in addressing our perception of their spiritual needs.   After all, psychological reality and religious belief are two sides of the very same coin.

In the next blog, focusing on “how to get to hope from here”, I will talk about vulnerability, commonality and hope:  think of Jesus on the Cross.

Bruce