Hope ≠ Optimism
By Rev. Steve Swope
My church, Irvine United Congregational, stopped in-person worship in mid-March 2020 because of the growing Covid pandemic. Just three months later, our interim minister optimistically suggested we might be back to normal as early as August – of 2020!
It’s not his fault; no one initially expected this to last as long as it has. And all of us have weathered it in different ways, with varied emotions.
As the third year of the pandemic begins, how are you feeling? What was your reaction in 2020? Last year? Yesterday? Are you optimistic about returning to some sort of normal life this year? Next year?
Optimism strives to see things in the best possible light, to expect the favorable outcome. It’s more than simply wishful thinking, though sometimes not much more.
Great Britain’s former Chief Rabbi Jonathon Sacks wrote in To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility,
“Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better.”
In other words, an optimist will expect things to get better, just because. Yet in time an optimist may grow disillusioned if things don’t go as expected.
Someone with hope, however, knows that things aren’t as they should be, and won’t become better if they’re just left alone. Instead hope says, some of us will have to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Paul commended the Thessalonians for the steadfastness of their hope, despite the hardships they faced and the apparent delay in Jesus’ return. “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” (1 Thess. 5:11)
In this third year of the pandemic, perhaps the better question is what are you doing? How – in hope – are you working to make the world better – not the entire planet, but the “world” around you?
With some still uneasy about too much public contact, how are you soothing their worries – in the store, at school, at work? When the public mood gets hot, do you help cool things down, or stoke the flames?
It takes a lot, I know, especially when passions are high, lives on the line, and truth seems clear. Better, perhaps, to let someone else bear the responsibility.
When I was in grade school, Helen Keller came and spoke at our school; it must have been not long before her death. I don’t remember a thing she said that day, but I remember her. Years later I found this quote from Helen Keller:
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
We don’t need to do it all, or do it perfectly. We are simply asked, in hope, to do something to encourage others and build them up, so that together we may reach the life God has promised us all.
