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
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