Calvin Synod Herald, 1982 (82. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1982-12-01 / 6. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD — 3 — REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA CHRISTMAS: THE CELEBRATION OF HOPE “I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His Word do I hope.” (Psalm 130:5) Any person who is optimistic around the end of our 20th century is either a liar or an idiot. From the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century to the end of the 19th, man lived in a fool’s paradise. With an entirely unfounded optimism we believed that our only problem «ignorance. Teach people, and they will, little by little, create a heaven on earth. Of course, we have created nothing of the kind. Then, the 20th century taught us that man is an untamed beast, and his knowledge produced nothing but more sophisticated tools of torture, death, and destruction. And the Church offered little help. She either went along with the idiotic optimism of secular man, or withdrew into a pietistic ivory tower, promising a cozy private salvation to the faithful, and condemning the world summarily: it is going to hell anyway, why bother? I came across the most intelligent summary of this Christian pessimism in the book of the French Reformed theologian, Jaques Ellul. He is not a clergyman, but a lawyer, and as a layman he has no patience with any easy optimism from the secular soothsayers, or from the pulpit. He condemns the practice of finding and dispensing isolated texts of cheerfulness and hope. He speaks of “abandonment” in somber colors: “The factual reality of modem man is not the death of God, but the silence of God. It is no longer: God is dead because man no longer believes in Him, but rather man is without hope because God is silent. ” I happen to disagree with Ellul. God isn’t silent — we are deaf! Chritsmas, for me, is the mystery of the opening of my stopped ears and of the realization that our speaking God speaks o/hope. In some Christian circles hope is apt to be treated as the poor relation of faith. It is wonderful to say, “I believe, ” but to say, “I hope, ” is a little feeble, as if when I can’t believe, I embrace hope as a poor second best. But this is not the view of the Bible. It speaks incessantly of hope, both in the Old, but especially in the New Testament: “Blessed is the man whose hope the Lord is.” \Jer. 17:7] ‘The hope of Israel.” [Jer. 17:13] “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” [Col. 1:27] ‘The hope we have as an anchor of the soul.” [Hebr. 6:19] ‘Tor a helmet the hope of salvation.” [IThess. 5:8] “Abideth faith, hope and charity.” [ICor. 13:13] When I read these and dozens more, I realize that hope is one of the most powerful words in the Bible, a beautiful gift of God that transforms our lives. For modern man, this hope anchored in God as revealed in fesus Christ, might be sheer nonsense. But human nature is human nature, and it cannot survive without the mystical, without the wonderful, and when these things are taken away from him by the all-knowing smart-alecs of the so called “scientific mind, ” he creates a new mythology of his own design. When religion casts off wonder, Hollywood seizes it. The immense success of films from the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to this year’s “ET” speaks for itself. When angels go out the front door, alien beings of science fiction come in the back door. You can demythologize mystery out of your sacred books, but you cannot explain away the hunger for the mystical out of the human personality. Man cannot live by bread alone, he must live on the mystical as well, sustained by the hope that is the fruit of our immersion in the mystery of God’s everlasting love. If man refuses to open himself to God’s mystery, his condition will be that of utter despair. The words of our text will have no meaning for him. His tragic motto will be, “I am waiting for Godot, the god that never comes.” That’s why we should never be ashamed to call the Bible “The Book of Hope. ” On one hand, in a cool and realistic way it tells us that “People are awful. ” Read about — the murder committed by Cain, — the dirty tricks of Jacob, — the savagery described in the Book offudges, — the depths to which even a hero like David could sink, — the vulgar opulence and lustfulness of Solomon, the Wise, — the cynical cruelty of fezabel, — the arrogance and decadence of Israel, — the hypocrisy of the religious, — and the devil-may-care attitude of the masses. Then open the New Testament and see what kind of world the Divine Child was born into: — the brutality of the Roman legions, — the ruthlessness of Herod, — the non-involvement of the Bethlehem citizens, — the greed of the tax-gatherers, — the empty formality of the religion of the Pharisees, — the cowardice of Peter, — the treachery of Judas. If that’s what you are looking for in the Bible, you should close the book and say with self-righteous indignation, “People are awful!” But I don’t close it, because for me it is this naked realism that makes the Bible the Book of Hope. If it would speak about good, beautiful and noble things only, it would have no interest whatsoever for me. I do not live in such a world! The world I live in is evil, ugly, cruel and murderous. The world I live in teaches me, by example, that homo homini lupus, man is man’s wolf. Idyllic stories would make me laugh, or throw up. The Bible is a lamp unto my feet, an intriguing Book of Hope, because it lists all the horrors, but says, at the same time, that I should never succumb to the notion that all this must be that way. My Bible tells me that “the Light shines, ” not in a well-scrubbed nursery room of angelic children, but “in the darkness" and declares that “the darkness has never mastered it. ” My Bible tells me that God works through history, and through your history and mine, calling into being a
