Hopeful, But Not Optimistic

A good friend recently wrote, “My usual optimism is fading.” I responded, “I am sorry to hear that your optimism is waning—but that is not necessarily a bad thing, for it is better to be realistic than optimistic. And don’t give up hope; there is a difference between hope and optimism.”

So, what is that difference, and can a person actually be hopeful but not optimistic?

Defining Terms

Some definitions of optimism and hope sound as if they are synonyms. Here is the definition from Dictionary.com for optimism: “a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.”

By contrast, hope means to work for and to wait for something with the confident expectation and anticipation that it will at some point, sooner or later, be fulfilled.

Optimism is an aspect of a person’s disposition or temperament. People with a sunny temperament are usually optimists, people with dark dispositions are mostly pessimists.

Hope, though, is a theological virtue. As Jim Wallis writes in his 2019 book Christ in Crisis, hope “is not simply a feeling, or a mood . . . . It is a choice, a decision, an action based on faith. . . . Hope is the engine of change. Hope is the energy of transformation” (p. 264).

Later in that book, Wallis reiterates what he has often said: “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change” (p. 281).

And here are wise words from an Irish poet: 

So, yes, a person can be hopeful even if he/she is not optimistic. Thus, I like what Black theologian/philosopher Cornel West tweeted back in January 2013: “I cannot be optimistic but I am a prisoner of hope.”

Emphasizing Action

A key difference between optimism and hope, as defined/described above, is this: optimism doesn’t demand anything of us (everything is going to be all right!), but hope entails effort as we endeavor to actualize that for which we hope.

Like the Kingdom of God, hope also demands that we work for what we hope for, knowing that it might well be a long time before that hope will be realized.

The New Testament says that “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13, NRSV). But faith and hope are a close third and second.

Further, the New Testament also declares that “faith without actions is dead” (James 2:26, Common English Bible). But isn’t it true to say that not just faith, but both love and hope without actions are also dead?

Love is not simply a feeling or an emotion. It is often said that "love is a verb,” and I believe that is true. Love is something that is best expressed not in words, but in action.

And so it is with hope.

Assessing the Future

So, linking this to my 10/25 post, what about the future of this country under the current President and Congress?

To be honest, I am not very optimistic about this year’s pending legislation or about the elections of 2022 or 2024. But I am hopeful for the future. If this year’s legislation doesn’t turn out well, I will do what little I can to help elect better members of Congress in 2022.

And if the elections of 2022 turn out to be a disappointment, again I will do what little I can to elect the best President and Congress possible in 2024.

If the latter is also a disappointment, then I will begin working for 2028 (although there may be little I can do, for that is the year I turn 90, if I make it that far).

Regardless of what happens, though, I will continue to be hopeful, believing that things will get better later, if not sooner. That is because I trust in the “God of hope.” Accordingly, these words from Romans 15:13 (NIV) is my prayer for all of you. 

In Criticism of Sens. Manchinema (and Their 50 Republican Colleagues)

This blog article was supposed to be about hope—at least that was my plan for this post. But the hopes of so many USAmericans are at the point of being betrayed by two Democratic Senators and by all 50 Republican Senators, and one of the hopes for Pres. Biden that I wrote about on January 20 seems to have been completely dashed.

The Dashed Hopes for the Biden Presidency

One of the hopes for the Biden Presidency that I included in that Jan. 20 blog post was this: “Restoring political bipartisanship to the Capitol.” But rather than political bipartisanship being restored, if anything, it has even worsened during these nine months Biden has been in the White House.

Another hope I had for the current administration was concerted effort to combat the problem of global warming. That hope has perhaps not been completely dashed, but right now it looks as if there will be far less done in that regard than so many of us hoped for.

The dashed hope for bipartisanship seems almost entirely because of the intransigence of the Republicans, and especially the 50 Republican Senators under the leadership of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But the hope for significant action in combatting climate change has largely been dashed by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Right now, the only bipartisanship that seems operative is that which is killing the Biden agenda, as captured in the following political cartoon by Bob Englehart way back on June 9. 

Criticism of Sens. Manchinema

In the U.S. Senate, 48 of the 50 Democratic Senators have been solidly in support of the President and his agenda. But with no Republican votes on most matters, it takes all 50 Democrats (plus Vice President Harris’s tie-breaking vote) to pass bills that can’t be filibustered.

Senators Manchin and Sinema have been so united in their opposition to especially the costly Build Back Better (BBB) legislation that their names have sometimes been conflated to Manchinema (check out #Manchinema).

Sens. Manchinemas’ main criticism of the BBB bill has been the price tag: they have been unwilling to approve little more than half of what the other 48 Democrats have been willing to support. And, sadly, at this point it seems that the major proposed cut is money to combat global warming.

I find it deplorable that just two Senators can wield so much power on such a critical issue. The long-term future of the country, and perhaps the world, is being jeopardized to a greater or lesser degree by just these two.

And the same two Senators have also been unwilling to consider support of a proposed change in the filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act, the voting rights bill which is so badly needed to protect American democracy.

Criticism of the 50 Republican Senators

Among Democrats, and especially those with progressive views, there is strong criticism of Sens. Manchinema—and for good reason. Perhaps it goes without saying, but the criticism of all the Republican Senators should be even stronger.

For example, the proposals in Biden’s Build Back Better proposal would benefit a multitude of USAmericans, not just Democrats. And the global warming counter-proposals are to ward off dire changes that would be detrimental for all, not just Democrats. But there is no Republican support.

And then what about voting rights? Back in 2006 when Bush was President, the Senate voted 98-0 to extend the landmark Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. In 2013, though, the SCOTUS wrongheadedly gutted that bill.

And then on Oct. 20, not even one Republican Senator would vote to even consider Manchin’s watered-down bill to protect voting rights. Manchin promised he would get ten Republicans to vote for the bill, which was less than the original Democratic proposal. But he failed to get even one Rep. vote.

So, yes, I am quite critical of Sens. Manchinema—but even more critical of the 50 Republican Senators, especially because of their unwillingness to help protect democracy in this country.

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** On Oct. 21, The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson posted an insightful opinion piece that is closely related to the above article; you can read it here (with no paywall).

“The Touch of the Master's Hand”

Last month, a Facebook friend posted the poem “The Touch of the Master’s Hand,” a poem I remember reading and using in sermons, in the 1950s. Now, sixty-five years later, I have mixed emotions about that once-popular poem penned a hundred years ago.

Rather than take the space to paste the poem here, I am giving you this link to read it online. Or you can listen to it impressively recited on YouTube—and here is the link (with subtitles) to it being sung in 2017. 

The Poet

Myra Brooks Welch was best known for the poem introduced above. Myra (1877~1959) was born in Illinois, but in 1920 she and her family moved to La Verne, Calif. They were members of the Church of the Brethren, the Anabaptist denomination that was prominent in that city.

Ms. Welch reported that she heard a speaker address a group of students on the power of God to bring out the best in people. She said that she was inspired by what she heard and wrote “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” in just 30 minutes!

Her poem was published in the February 26, 1921, issue of The Gospel Messenger, the Church of the Brethren’s official church paper (now known as just Messenger).

The Poem

Myra Welch’s poem spread across the country, and I heard it and was favorably impressed by it, while still a teen-aged Southern Baptist in Missouri—and as some of you know, I started preaching in 1954 at age 16.

Wikipedia (here) gives a good, succinct summary: “The poem tells of a battered old violin that is about to be sold as the last item at an auction for a pittance, until a violinist steps out of the audience and plays the instrument, demonstrating its beauty and true value.”

Then comes the primary point: “The violin then sells for $3,000 instead of a mere $3. The poem ends by comparing this instrument touched by the hand of a master musician to the life of a sinner that is touched by the hand of God.” (Myra, though, no doubt considered Jesus Christ to be the Master.)

The Problem

While I have no doubt that there are many people whose lives have been significantly changed by having been touched by “the Master’s hand," sadly, there seems to be far too little evidence of such change in far too many people who claim to be followers of Jesus.

Those who are evangelicals, as I was in the 1950s, are the Christians most likely to resonate with the message of Ms. Welch’s poem. But now it seems that some conservative evangelicals are prominently pushing policies that seem opposed to the teachings of Jesus.

There are unfortunate moral lapses evident in the lives of some Christians in all denominations, as well as people of other religions and of no religion. But I am writing here not about personal piety but about problematic positions on public policy, of which there are many.

The problem is not just one in this country, however. Think of the situation in Ethiopia, for example. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is said to be (here) “a devout Evangelical Pentecostal Christian of the Full Gospel Believer’s Church.”

The Ethiopian PM reportedly attends church regularly and “occasionally ministers in preaching and teaching.” Further, “he frequently underscores the importance of faith.” By his public religiosity, he seems to be an example of a man who has been “touched by the Master’s hand.”

To the great chagrin of many, though, in the past year the policies of Abiy Ahmed have led to what is being called “war crimes.” While garnering little news coverage in this country, the civil war in Ethiopia has been marked by military atrocities as well as by a huge humanitarian crisis.

The Oct. 9 issue of The Economist reports that “Ethiopia is deliberately starving its own citizens.” Some 400,000 people in the northern part of the country are facing “ catastrophic hunger.”

How could such problems possibly result from the policies of a man who has been “touched by the Master’s hand?”

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** For a broader description of the current civil war in Ethiopia, see this article by Philip Jenkins in the Oct. 8 issue of The Christian Century.

Believing What You See, Seeing What You Believe

The impetus for this article came from seeing the following optical illusion on Facebook last month: 

What do you think? Are the blue bars all parallel, or are they zig-zag? Can you believe what you see?

Victoria Skye’s Illusions

The above image was created in 2017 by Victoria Skye, who introduces herself on one website as “a children’s and family magician and balloon twister in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Another website says she is a “magical entertainer” and “illusion artist,” and it gives a link to the image above, which is called the “Skye Blue Café Wall Illusion.” That website also links to a YouTube video, which explains that the blue bars in the image are really parallel.

So, what about it? Can we really believe what we see (or what we think we see)?

Believing What You See

As you know, Missouri has long been called the Show-me State. The origin of that unofficial motto goes back at least to Willard Vandiver, who served from 1897 to 1905 as a Missouri member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

According to this 2021 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vandiver declared in a 1899 speech about a questionable issue, “I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.”

As one born and reared in Missouri, I have always taken some pride in our state’s motto: it is a caution against gullibility and a call for verifiability.

One troubling problem, though, is that we humans don’t always see things correctly. Even what we think we see clearly can sometimes be an illusion—as the above image of Victoria Skye clearly shows. And we can be mistaken about important, real-life matters also.

Thus, a large majority of the voters in the Show-me State were under the illusion that their preferred candidate for POTUS in 2016 was an admirable man who would lead the U.S. in a positive way. But after four years they were still unable to believe what they saw and voted for him again.

Seeing What you Believe

Some things have to be believed in order to be seen. That was the title of#20, the seven-page chapter in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018). (I wish you all had my book and would (re)read that chapter, but you can read it online here.)

In that chapter, as in my July 10 blog post, I quote the fox in The Little Prince: “Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” What we know intuitively or, yes, by faith is necessary for “seeing” things that are of the greatest importance to us. We “see” those things because of what we believe.

But here, too, is a knotty problem: our beliefs are not always correct. Just as we can be misled by what we see with our physical eyes (come on, the blue bars in Virginia Skye’s image are clearly zigzag!), we can also be misled by what we incorrectly believe.

To avoid duplicating what I wrote for #20 in my book, here is an important matter not discussed there—and something I need to know more about. There is often, we are told, a skewing or misunderstanding of “reality” by something psychologists call cognitive bias.

I found this 2020 article about that matter instructive, although it did not say enough about the central importance of beliefs/presuppositions. But it did refer to “confirmation bias,” which is “favoring information that conforms to . . . existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.”

Because we all tend to see what we believe, we have to examine our beliefs regularly just as we have to be sure what we see with our physical eyes is correct. (The blue bars still look zigzag to me!).

To use the previous example, we “libtards” who strongly disagree with the “Trumpists” must discuss or debate not just what we see/hear but most of all what we each believe and why.

To acknowledge that we all see what we do and evaluate what we see on the basis of our basic beliefs/presuppositions is of the greatest importance.

Edward Bellamy's Vision of a Socialist Utopia

Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, was the subject of my August 30 blog post. In that article, I mentioned that Bellamy was a democratic socialist—but he was not so to the extent of Edward Bellamy, his cousin who authored a powerful novel about a socialist utopia.

Edward Bellamy’s Bio, Briefly

The fathers of Edward Bellamy (1850~1898) and Francis Bellamy (1855~1931) were brothers. Edward’s father was a Baptist minister, but Edward did not follow his father’s footsteps and did not become a minister as his cousin Francis did.

Edward, rather, became a journalist and then after developing tuberculosis at the age of 25 he became a novelist and wrote three unremarkable novels that were published between 1880 and 1885.

The life of Edward Bellamy changed drastically, though, after his utopian science fiction book Looking Backward, 2000-1887, was published early in 1888. Within a year it sold some 200,000 copies. 

By the end of the century, Looking Backward had sold more copies than any other novel published in America except for Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur. It “especially appealed to a generation of intellectuals alienated from the alleged dark side of the Gilded Age” (see here).

(Curiously, while I have known of the latter books for most of my life, I don’t remember ever hearing of Bellamy’s book until August of this year.)

Bellamy published Equality, a sequel to Looking Backward, in 1897, but it was a disappointment. The following year, less than two months after his 48^th birthday, Bellamy died in his home state of Massachusetts.

Edward Bellamy’s Book, Briefly

Even though, as indicated, I had not heard of Bellamy’s highly successful book before this past summer, I bought a Kindle copy (for 99 cents!) in early September and read it with great interest, in spite of some of it being rather pedantic.

The novel narrates the story of a young Bostonian named Julian West, who falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep in 1887 and wakes up 113 years later in a radically changed Boston.

West is discovered in his underground sleeping chamber by a Dr. Leete, who along with his lovely daughter Edith explain and introduce West to the city, and the American society, of the year 2000. To his great amazement, the country, indeed, has become a socialist utopia.

Spark Notes (here) provides a detailed summary and analysis of the book—and even the full text of the novel—so I will make only the following brief comment about its content.

From Dr. Leete’s explanation, it becomes clear that Boston and the entire U.S. has become a utopia by the choices made through the years by the general public and not at all because of government control and/or coercion. It was, truly, the result of democratic socialism.

So, What About It?

I found Bellamy’s novel so intriguing because it was written at the very time that unchecked capitalism and “robber barons” such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were causing such suffering by exploitation of the working people of the country.

The year Looking Backward was published was also the very time Walter Rauschenbusch was beginning to develop the Social Gospel—and his biographers say that the young pastor of the church in Hell’s Kitchen read Bellamy’s book.

A 2019 article titled “When Christian Evangelicals Loved Socialism” states, “Rauschenbusch never became an overt political activist allied with any socialist group. But he was sympathetic to the goals of socialists, if not always their methods.”

At the present time, the progressives in the Democratic Party are often vilified as being socialists, but perhaps they are merely seeking what Edward Bellamy and Walter Rauschenbusch envisioned; that is, a society in which the needs of all people are adequately met.

Why don’t we all want, and work for, such a society?

What about Altruism/Charity/Philanthropy?

Why do people give money to needy people or public causes? Why should people make charitable or philanthropic contributions? What is altruism and how can it best be implemented? These are questions worth careful consideration.  

Give because of Greed?

Some of us grew up in churches that stressed tithing—and I have been a tither my whole life and encouraged tithing when I was a pastor. But I never told people that tithing was a means for receiving God’s blessings and to receive more from God than they ever gave to God and God’s work.

There are preachers, though, who have appealed to people’s “greed” to encourage them to tithe. “If you tithe, God will reward you by increasing your income” was the appalling “pitch” some preachers used, seeking to bolster the church’s financial income.

More generally, there are those who give because of the “greedy” desire for the good feelings they get from contributing to the emotional appeals by charitable organizations and/or needy people.

Perhaps greed is too strong a word to use here, but I simply mean the strong desire to get more of something, such as more blessings and (maybe) money or more feelings of self-satisfaction.

Give because of Guilt?

Historically, two of the most generous philanthropists in the U.S. were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Carnegie (1835~1919) made his fortune in the steel industry, and the wealth of Rockefeller (1839~1937) came largely from profits he made from the Standard Oil Company, which he established in 1870.

The philanthropy of those two industrialists is clearly visible in the worldwide Carnegie libraries and the work of the Rockefeller Foundation. And without doubt, multitudes of people have been helped by the philanthropic gifts of those two men .**

However, recently June and I have watched (on DVD) The Men Who Built America, the six-hour miniseries docudrama originally broadcast on the History Channel in 2012, and we have seen an apparently accurate portrayal of the ruthlessness of those two tycoons and the harm they did to so many.

Particularly horrifying were the catastrophic Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the Homestead Steel Mill Strike/Massacre of 1892. The docudrama clearly depicts Carnegie’s culpability in both of those tragedies.

That excellent miniseries, though, fails to note that those catastrophes occurred during the very time Walter Rauschenbusch was pastor in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City and beginning to emphasize what came to be known as the Social Gospel (see my 9/30 blog post).

Even though Carnegie had built a few libraries before those events that significantly tarnished his good name, most of his philanthropic work was after them and most likely at least partly rooted in his sense of guilt and his desire to restore his reputation.

Give because of Gratitude?

In the New Testament, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Freely you have received; freely give” (10:8, NIV). Accordingly, it is obvious that the best reason for altruistic giving is not because of “greed” or guilt but because of gratitude.

A strong sense of gratitude goads us to give graciously to help others. But how is the best way to give? Just acting upon our subjective feelings may not be best.

In recent years, an “effective altruism” movement has been popular in some circles. It recommends rationally considering ways to give that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people rather than giving on the basis of emotional appeals and feel-good causes.

(You may want to check out this website: Using reason and evidence to do the most good - Effective Altruism.)

Interestingly, two major proponents of effective altruism are non-religious thinkers/writers: Peter Singer (b. 1946) and Steven Pinker (b. 1954). To learn more about them, see Singer’s 2013 TED talk and this 2021 interview with Pinker.

There is also an Effective Altruism for Christians website (see here). I also encourage you to (re)read Guidelines for Charitable Giving, my blog post for Nov. 30, 2010.

Yes, there is much to consider with regard to altruism/charity/philanthropy.

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** I wrote about those two outstanding philanthropists in my Sept. 15, 2017, blog post titled “Problems with Philanthropy,” and it is worth reading again.