The Hope of the Hopeless
Some speak of hope as if “hope,” as a concept, were the antidote to the various problems and concerns of our age. They seem to suggest people just need to be more “hopeful” and positive about the future. I have a different perspective; I think hopelessness is our only hope.
In October 1978, while living under severe censorship and oppression in communist Czechoslovakia, the playwright and regime-critic Václav Havel wrote an essay about powerlessness. His words still resonate today. Havel and other leading intellectuals in the communist bloc were in a truly powerless situation when he penned those words. He wrote in a situation in which, as he described it, “humans stand against [the post-totalitarian system] alone, abandoned, and isolated” (“The Power of the Powerless,” in The Power of the Powerless and Other Essays; published in English in 1985 by Palach Press; reprinted by M. E. Sharpe in 1990; p. 67).
Havel’s words about the power of the powerless resonated so deeply that he became the “spiritual” leader of Central Europe’s anti-Communism movement. He paid for his words with several long stints in prison. One of his famous works, Letters to Olga, contains a collection of correspondence with his wife during his prison stays. So great was the power of his words, however, that he was elected president of his country after the fall of Communism in 1989.
To me, it’s ironic that well-crafted honesty about one’s helplessness can pose such a threat to power. Havel’s words gave flesh to the skeleton of the dissident movement. His writings spoke into being a wave of discontent that eventually toppled vicious regimes. When the voices of the helpless, powerless, and hopeless are given agency, they strike fear in the hearts of those who seek to control, oppress, and rule with impunity. It’s ironic.
Sometimes we as humans need to fall flat in order to understand how to stand strong. As Havel wrote, “There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight” (p. 68). Or, as common wisdom puts it, necessity is the mother of all invention.
In his 2017 book Embracing Hopelessness, social ethicist and theologian Miguel De La Torre defines hopelessness in this way: “Hopelessness must be understood as desperation, a desperation rooted in the hope denied. When a people are desperate, they will do whatever it takes to change the situation because nothing is left to lose” (p. 140). Rather than defining hopelessness as resignation, inertia, or melancholy—a real temptation—De La Torre sees hopelessness as the belief that crucifixion is inevitable and that, in the face of such inevitability, we must find the power to live boldly even when it’s clear that all is lost. “To be hopeless,” he writes, “is to be emboldened, knowing that a different result is not dependent on us (we are not the Savior)” (p. 141).
In making his case, De La Torre swims strongly against the stream of mainstream theology in Europe and North America. Rejecting the positivistic thinking of Georg Hegel, Jürgen Moltmann, or even Martin Luther King, Jr., he argues that “the arc of the moral universe is not long, nor does it bend toward anything at all” (p. 59). He quotes Terry Eagleton’s Hope Without Optimism (2015): “The cosmos is no more intent on improvement than it is hell-bent on self-destruction” (p. 97). De La Torre argues that hoping in hope itself is a meaningless construct. In fact, he believes that the language of hope is often a tool of oppression by those who have no interest in addressing what is, for them, a favorable status quo.
When one scans through media headlines and social media posts today, it’s not hard to conclude that these are dark days. This feeling depends on who you are and where you sit, but the unease appears to be growing. Not all share the same desperation about the same issues, but things don’t seem right in our society today. Many churches are struggling to know how to respond. How are believing people to forge ahead in such a moment?
In 2022, I reached a particularly low spot in my ministry in Fresno, California. I made plenty of mistakes in my time here, but I was also dealt a tough hand. The church I had come to work for was filled with buried land mines and unexploded ordnance: cans kicked down the road and competing visions siloed off from one another. My job was to clear the minefield and create the possibility for renewal.
For over a decade, I toiled and used every bit of training I had. We navigated rough days, had some small victories, made hard and unpopular decisions, and tried our best to deal with fallout. We made it through Covid and somehow survived a season of toxic political bickering. But through it all, I felt as if the burden for “rescuing” our church and pulling off a miraculous rebirth was on my shoulders. Despite the challenging landscape, I always saw a silver lining.
Until 2022, that is. A particularly painful chapter in my tenure here made me want to throw in the towel. I finally realized just how hopeless things were. Instead of looking on the bright side, I was looking for the exit. I just needed my mic-drop moment when I could walk away.
In that season of hopelessness—when I was on the verge of giving up—something miraculous happened. In early 2023, our board of elders made an unexpectedly bold decision that upended the status quo and set us on a path to relaunch our church. Much hard work has had to happen ever since, but the work has become life-giving. Real possibilities for a changed future have been born in the midst of hopeless desperation. Looking back on it, I am certain that God the Savior intervened—but not until I had lost hope.
We used to sing a hymn entitled “Abide with Me.” The first stanza ends with these words, “When other helpers fail and comforts flee; Help of the helpless, O abide with me.”
God is the Help of the helpless. God is also the Hope of the hopeless. Oh, that we might all lose hope and embrace hopeless despair in order to discover our true Hope.
