The reference to despair in the title of Michael Gerson’s column in the Washington Post yesterday probably sums up the state of most people this year: This Christmas, hope may feel elusive. But despair is not the answer.
Gerson notes that hope may be hard to come by but it is necessary. He illustrates the point with his own cancer, which he discloses. He will not be dying soon, but he will not recover either.
Gerson puts it this way, “How can we make sense of blind and stupid suffering? How do we live with purpose amid events that scream of unfair randomness? What sustains hope when there is scant reason for it?”
Gerson then points out that the Nativity story is one of “misunderstood hope.” Israel expects national restoration and gets instead a baby as God’s arrival.
The Christmas promise for Gerson is this: “a transformation of the heart in which we release the burden of our desires, and live in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all his mercies stand revealed.”
Our experience of hope may be wish fulfillment, but there is “vivid evidence that hope wins.”
It’s a beautiful, heartfelt column. But I wrote to him, although I don’t actually know his email address—I’m hoping he gets the message—that it offered nothing to secular life. That may be harsh, but the column needed some shift of metaphor to speak to those who don’t have Christmas, as he does.
I offered him a copy of The Universe Is on Our Side. For the state of national life today is what happens when that promise of God dies and you don’t have anything else. The something else is what we need on Christmas 2021. It’s there, in the universe itself.
I disagree that Gerson’s column offers nothing to secular life. His column, like the teachings of the new testament can be great life lessons even for the secular world. Are the Beatitudes not indeed a manual for living even if read in secular way? With which ones can you really disagree, no matter your faith? Try David Brooks’ great book “The Second Mountain” and the quest for a moral life. As a life long Jew in confusion or transition, he writes: “I can’t unread Matthew. The beatitudes are the moral sublime, the source of awe, the moral purity that takes your breath away and toward which everything points. In the beatitudes we see the ultimate road map for our lives.” Is a quest for a moral life bad? Can those of secular beliefs not seek a moral life in whatever is their own chosen road map? The promise of God is indeed not dead. It can live in faith or secular society. Why is the Gerson message “Despair is not the answer” not fit advice for everyone, of every faith or no faith? I see his column as uplifting and not because I am Christian, but because I believe, like he writes that: “On Christmas, we consider the disorienting, vivid evidence that hope wins. If true, it is a story that can reorient every human story.” It can reorient “EVERY HUMAN STORY”. Not just those with faith in organized religion. Thanks for posting Bruce and I wish you and all a chance in 2022, if you feel trapped in despair, to overcome whatever is trapping you and the “state of national life” today, which quite frankly – we should be thankful for in many respects. There is indeed “vivid evidence that hope wins.”