Blessed Hope

After finishing my coursework in graduate school, I organized a dissertation writing group with a couple other grad students in Renaissance Literature. Our intent was not only to get feedback on prospectus and dissertation drafts but to force ourselves to meet deadlines and to write for a real audience. It was a difficult time to be a PhD student in English. The market for English PhDs was dismal, even worse than it is today. Many students dropped out ABD (all but dissertation). So we banded together into a writing group.

One of us was doing a reader-response analysis of the Fairie Queene, analyzing the maze-like experience of reading that poem. Another was writing on despair in Renaissance drama. I was writing on anxiety in Paradise Lost. At first, none of us thought about any connection between our dissertation topics and the nature of graduate study. Then one afternoon, as we were talking about how personal agendas often lie beneath abstruse academic discourse, it struck us how our own academic arguments reflected our experience of graduate study in English: a maze or labyrinth, despair, and anxiety.

I want to talk to you about hope today in part because I know firsthand that special “tribulation” which constitutes graduate study in English. Paul says that “tribulation worketh patience, and patience [worketh] experience; and experience, hope”—which elsewhere Paul calls “blessed hope” (Rom. 5:3–4; Titus 2:13). I shall speak today of “blessed hope.”

Hope and Faith

Hope is indeed among the most blessed of all gospel virtues. Many of us know this all too well from bouts of hopelessness. So I was surprised to discover a couple years ago that the LDS Bible Dictionary has no entry for “hope.” It has an entry for faith and charity but none for hope. I am not sure why. Maybe the editors figured that everyone already knows what hope is. After all, it is such a common little word, one that often bears no special religious meaning—as in “I hope we win!” Still, hope is one of the three so-called “theological” Christian virtues—faith, hope, and charity—which together with the four cardinal virtues formed the counterpart to the Seven Deadly Sins in medieval thought. Of the mighty Christian triplet “faith, hope, and charity,” only hope is left out of our Bible Dictionary.¹ Too often “hope” seems to be a neglected middle member of this triad in LDS reflection, dwarfed by the towering theological terms that frame it. I fear that sometimes “hope” is left out of the lexicon of our lives as well.

Yet hope is not a whit less important than its big sisters faith and charity, and in some respects is even more demanding than its near twin, faith. Many Latter-day Saints find it comparatively easy to express faith in the foundational truths of the gospel—that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph was a prophet, and so forth. But with hope, the Lord seems to be expecting something rather more personal of us. For hope is more than belief in propositional truths. Hope bids us not only believe but feel. It is an attitude of the heart more than of the mind. Grammatically, “hope” functions not only as a noun, like “faith,” but as a verb. Hope is the act of a soul expectantly reaching out toward the future. Belief can attach itself to the past, the present, or the future. Hope, by contrast, orients itself emphatically to the future.

And not just to the future in general but to our own future. Hope focuses on deeply personal possibilities about our own lives rather than on impersonal facts. As we all know, it is possible to believe wholeheartedly that God’s purposes will prevail and yet lack what the scriptures call a “lively hope” that God’s purposes will prevail in our own lives or in the lives of our loved ones (1 Pet. 1:3). To summon this bright and blessed hope for our own lives can test the capacity of even the faithful, like Abraham, who “against hope believed in hope”—that is, he hoped even when things seemed hopeless (Rom. 4:18). In dark nights of the soul, such blessed hope can be oh so hard to hold on to. Nonetheless, we are instructed to “lay hold on the hope set before us” (Heb. 6:18). In order to grasp hope, we need to understand it.

Hope and Despair

For me, this is best achieved by gazing into the dark realm of hope’s antithesis: despair. The distinction between faith and hope comes most clearly into focus for me when I think about their antonyms. The opposite of faith is doubt; the opposite of hope is despair. Moroni precisely declares, “If ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair, and despair cometh because of iniquity” (Moro. 10:22).

This is hard doctrine. Despair is quite literally to lack hope: de sperare. Even more precisely, it is to deny hope. Therefore, traditionally, despair has been thought to be not only caused by sin, as Moroni teaches, but also sinful in itself. Why? Because despair is not simply to be without hope but to set oneself against hope. To deny hope is to deny Christ and his Atonement. It is to say that Christ can not, or will not, redeem me, heal me, bless me. It is to believe that the future is closed, as least for me, against the possibility of blessedness, that things will never get better, that the dawn will never come. Religious despair thus is darker than discouragement, despondency, or depression. It “cometh from iniquity,” particularly from the sin of denying the power of the Atonement in one’s own life. Again, this is hard doctrine, but doctrine I believe to be true.

Despair defines the internal essence of Hell. You may remember that in Inferno, Dante portrays the Gates of Hell inscribed with the dreadful words, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” because the wretched souls who dwell therein live in despair of salvation.² Worlds without end, they will never enter paradise.

Likewise, taking a cue from Dante, when Milton first describes the “dungeon horrible” of hell he asserts that “hope never comes” to the fallen angels there. Milton, however, makes it very clear that this is not because of where they are but who they are. He famously writes that Satan can no more flee from Hell “then from himself can fly”: “for within him Hell / He brings.” Milton’s Satan easily escapes the infernal pit on his journey to Eden in search of human prey. Nevertheless, as he lands on earth he cries: “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.”³ In this tormented soliloquy it is clear that Satan, in his pride, chooses to live in despair rather than accept hope through divine redemption. Milton thus shows us that Satan is punished by his sin—the sin of despair—even more than for his sin. Indeed, his punishment is despair.

Allegories of Hope

Many of us have had bitter foretastes of such hellish despair even in this life. In fact, it is often the best of us, the most sensitive souls, those most eager to be good, who are most vulnerable to hopelessness. This is powerfully conveyed in two great Early Modern allegories: Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Spenser’s Redcrosse Knight, who represents holiness, and Bunyan’s “Christian” each battle despair. And each discovers that none can win the battle against despair by human strength alone. Overcoming despair requires saving grace from God. The antidote to despair is the Atonement; salvation from this dread foe comes not from our willpower alone but from Christ’s power over our wills. Christians can lay hold on hope only by clinging to Christ and the promise of salvation through his Atonement.

Redcrosse Knight discovers this in the Cave of Despayre. At first Despayre looks like an easy enemy to dispatch. He is, after all, a grisly, horrid-looking figure who dwells in a “darksome cave” surrounded by the corpses of those he has induced to kill themselves. Who would be attracted to such a vice? Then Despayre talks. His rhetoric is calculated to appeal precisely to those who, like Redcrosse, embrace the quest for holiness, who want to be good. Redcrosse assaults Despayre in the name of justice. Despayre appeals to Redcrosse’s sense of justice to remind him that he is a sinful man, one who has often lost his way, disappointed and betrayed those he loves most, and stained his soul with blood and sin: “the lenger life,” says Despayre, “the greater sin, / The greater sin, the greater punishment.”

Then do no further goe, nor further stray,
    But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake,
    Th’ill to prevent, that life ensewen may.
    For what hath life, that may it lovéd make,
    And gives not rather cause it to forsake?
    Feare, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife,
    Paine, hunger, cold, that makes the hart to quake;
    And ever fickle fortune rageth rife,
All which, and thousands mo, do make a loathsome life.

Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne.⁴

Spenser’s rhetoric takes us deep into the psychology of despair. It lets us experience how it is that a good man, a man who fervently desires to be holy, can be induced to contemplate suicide. Hypnotized by Despayre’s words, Redcrosse takes out a dagger with a trembling hand and prepares to kill himself. Suddenly, Despayre’s dark spell is broken by a lady companion named Una, who “snatcht the curséd knife” and rebukes her knight. Una reminds Redcrosse of his mission to slay the dragon and of his claim, though a sinner, on God’s mercies, because “Where justice growes, there grows eke greater grace.”⁵

Una, of course, is a figure of grace in the poem. Her rescue of Redcrosse enacts a repeated pattern in book 1 of the Faerie Queene. Redcrosse repeatedly needs to be rescued. Spenser understands that holiness cannot be obtained by heroic human efforts of will alone; it requires God’s sanctifying our wills. Spenser underscores this familiar Protestant doctrine in the narrator’s moralizing comment that follows Una’s rescue of Redcrosse Knight: “If any strength we have, it is to ill, / But all the good is Gods, both power and eke will.”⁶ This insight was not exclusively Protestant. It is also captured in the Catholic categorization of “hope” as a theological virtue. Remember that unlike the cardinal virtues, theological virtues require infusions of God’s grace.

John Bunyan also allegorizes the struggle with despair in his allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, which tells the story of Christian’s journey to the Celestial City. Early on his journey, Christian falls into a Slough of Despond, but readily escapes this muddy pitfall and continues on his way. Despondency is not the same thing as despair. All of us have to overcome occasional feelings of despondency, some of us more than others. The deeper spiritual danger is that of letting discouragement settle into despair—a fixed conviction that there is no hope for me—no, not even through the Atonement. Not now, not ever.

Christian falls into this spiritual peril later in his journey when he is locked in a dark dungeon by the Giant Despair. This is not a momentary delay on his journey, like the Slough of Despond. Christian is trapped in this dungeon a long time, during which he is repeatedly beaten by Despair and bidden to take his own life. All the while his friend Hopeful encourages Christian by reminding him of God’s many past mercies. But to little avail. Finally, after praying all through a dark night, on Sunday morning at dawn, Christian finds a means for escape:

Now a little before it was day, good Christian, as one half amazed, brake out in this passionate speech, What a fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking Dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty? I have a Key in my bosom called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any Lock in Doubting Castle. Then said Hopeful, That’s good news; good Brother pluck it out of thy bosom, and try.⁷

Christian, like Redcrosse, with the help of a friend, remembers Christ’s saving grace. And the doors of his dark dungeon can no longer hold him.

Bunyan’s didactic point is clear: We, like Christian, have the key to unlock the prison of despair. It lies within our reach. It is, however, something that is not simply given; it is something that must also be grasped.

For both Christian and Redcrosse Knight, hope comes by grace. It appears in the promise of salvation through the Atonement. The face of Christ can light the darkest prison, bringing a “brightness of hope” in our deepest distress. As Paul writes, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts . . . in the face of Jesus Christ.” Hence the faithful may say, “We are troubled on every side; yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair” (2 Cor. 4:6, 8).

Hope and the Atonement

Gospel hope is centered in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. “What shall we hope for?” asks Mormon, “Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal . . . according to the promise” (Moro. 7:41). This hope is sure because this promise is sure. It has been written in the blood of Christ.

In ordinary usage, hope often conveys “a hint of uncertainty. For example, we may say that we hope for a change in the weather. . . . In the language of the gospel, however, the word hope is sure, unwavering, and active.”⁸ Gospel hope is sure because it is anchored on the ultimate reality of the Atonement rather than on our often illusive proximate desires.

Elder Maxwell draws a distinction between ultimate hope in Christ and proximate hopes for the future. The latter can be the invention of human desires, the offspring of our optimism.⁹ Gospel hope, however, is even deeper than optimism.

The Czech playwright Vaclav Havel observed: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”¹⁰ I would add that it is also the conviction that things can ultimately turn out well for the faithful through the Atonement of Christ.

In this life, sometimes things do not seem to turn out well, forcing us to confess, with Nephi, that we “do not know the meaning of all things” (1 Ne. 11:17). Nevertheless, we can still be certain, regardless of how things turn out in the near term, that “all things” make sense to God. And in the long term, “all things” shall ultimately work together for good for those that love the Lord, according to God’s immutable promise of Atonement (D&C 98:3; see also Rom. 8:28; D&C 90:24; 100:15; 105:40).

Imagining Hope

And so, with such assurance, we can cling to ultimate promises, even in the midst of tribulation. And pray for certainty, even amid uncertainty. Hope shall surely come. And when it comes it does so on the wings of the Spirit, bringing comfort to our souls. “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” writes Emily Dickinson,

That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—¹¹

Dickinson imagines hope as a songbird. When I imagine hope, I often think of two scriptural images: an anchor and an empty tomb at dawn.

Both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon compare hope to an anchor. In the Book of Ether we read that hope “maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast” (Ether 12:4; see also Heb. 6:19). The anchor has become a standard symbol for hope in Christian iconography. It was used by Edmund Spenser, for example, in the title page of The Faerie Queene. It is an image with special purchase upon sea-faring peoples, but also upon all of us who are occasionally tossed upon “life’s tempestuous sea.” As Sister Elaine Jack has said:

Hope is a steadying influence. To say it is an anchor is to say it can keep us from drifting aimlessly or getting caught in whirlpools or running into sandbars. Hope, the anchor, is essential in this world so full of tidal waves. Sometimes those waves slap us from behind, sometimes we see them coming but cannot stop them or get out of the way. In all cases hope ties us to safety. The waves come and go in their fury or playfulness, but hope is always there if we will but use this sure anchor.¹²

When I think of hope I also think of light—especially the light of dawn that dispels dark night. In particular, I imagine a dawn long ago which lighted an empty tomb.

Several years ago, a dear friend gave me a print of a painting by a Swiss artist named Eugène Burnand, which captures for me this image of hope. It depicts Peter and John running to the tomb on Easter morning. In it, we see the faces of two men, one old and one young, each pressing forward toward the dawn. We do not see the empty tomb, nor the angel. Only their expectant faces and the dawn.

I love the symbolism of this moment. Youth and age, innocence and experience, each leaning into the early morning light. Both faces full of eagerness, longing, love, and expectation. Yet Peter’s face is also lined with care, some furrows perhaps deepened by anxiety over what the Master, whom he had recently thrice denied, will say to his greathearted, if imperfect, apostle. Yet still he rushes toward that rendezvous with his beloved Redeemer. I love this image of hope.

I especially love the fact that Burnand chooses to depict this pivotal moment in salvation history—the Resurrection—from a very human point of view. He tells the story through the experience of Peter and John. Moreover, he captures them in a moment in time comparable to our own—before they have seen the risen Christ, in a posture of intense hope for reunion with him. We, too, hope to receive a longed-for embrace from our risen Lord. We live on this side of the Second Coming, but in eager expectation of a great morning of resurrection and reunion. We live in hope of a glorious embrace when “all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well.”¹³

All Shall Be Well

So wrote the saintly medieval mystic Julian of Norwich in incantatory phrases subsequently incorporated into the climax of T. S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets: “Sin is Behovely, but / All shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well.”¹⁴

And so sang our own pioneers. When I think of hope, I think of their hope that all would be well. I recall a pioneer grandmother, Elizabeth Haven Barlow, who lived through all the tribulations of the early Saints—from the apostasies in Kirtland, to the mobbings in Missouri, to the expulsion from Nauvoo, to the crossing of the plains, to sending her husband on a mission, to serving as Relief Society president for thirty-one years (until she was seventy-seven years old).

After recounting the life of her mother, a daughter concludes her mother’s history by quoting from the seventh chapter of Revelation, in which John the Evangelist is shown the fate of the faithful who suffer “great tribulation.” She writes:

To mother the Gospel had meant everything. No sacrifice was too great. . . . She dug sego roots and thistles and went to the canyon for wood while her husband was on his mission. . . . Nothing stirred her soul more than repeating the events she had passed through in Missouri and Nauvoo.

She bore eight children . . . and at the time of her death had 49 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Let me close this biography by quoting from Revelation, 7th Chapter: “. . . What are these which are arrayed in white robes? . . . And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. . . . They shall hunger no more, neither (shall they) thirst . . . and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”¹⁵

This is my hope. It is the hope common to saints in every age. For this promise belongs to the faithful in all ages who are called to undergo “great tribulation.” Let us develop the patience of hope in our trials—even the trials of graduate study. In our storms, let us hold fast to this sure anchor. In the darkest night, let us orient our lives toward the dawn.