Say not the days are evil – Who’s to blame?
Or fold your hands, as in defeat – O shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely,
In God’s name…
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long,
Faint not. Fight on!
Maltbie D. Babcock
This past week we marked the day that honors the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. No doubt you heard and read many eloquent testimonies to his life, legacy, and patient endurance in the face of evil. Among the words I read were these from the editorial board of The Washington Post:
‘King preached both urgency and patience – nonviolent perseverance in the face of fire hoses, dogs, beatings, lynchings. Every second of marginalization [for African Americans] was intolerable. Yet it took a decade after King’s 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott for Congress to approve the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1955. Enslaved Americans had been freed a century before. King did not lose hope. He kept working.’
King understood that it takes patience to overcome evil. For King evil was not theoretical. He knew that evil is real and difficult to root out. In the face of all that he and his partners endured in the struggle against evil, the obstacles that stood in the way of progress, and the slow pace of reform, it would have been easy for him to have lost hope and given up. Truth be told, there were moments when he was tempted to do so. But he never did. He kept hoping. He kept working.
In this, I submit, King expressed the Theology of Hope.
The Theology of Hope always endures in the face of evil. It knows that in a fallen, broken world, evil exists, and that from time to time, gains the power to, for a time, have its way. But it does not let that knowledge quench the hope for better days. It believes. It perseveres. It works for better days even when their arrival is delayed. For it knows, as King so famously said (although it was actually the Reverend Theodore Parker who said it first) that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’
We need King’s perspective in the times we face. As a new year breaks upon the shore of our lives, there is much that might cause us to despair. America is becoming balkanized. People believe the most bizarre conspiracy theories. A slow-moving coup continues apace. The days when people pulled together and sacrificed for the sake of the general welfare seem to be gone forever; individualism, at least in some quarters, has all but triumphed over communitarian love for neighbor. Truth is both relative and disposable. Democratic principle, the foundation on which our society has been built, however imperfectly, is under assault and crumbling. What happens when the very foundations of a society are broken? When everyone does what is right in their own eyes? When truth is lost, and people are divided? History tells the answer: evil rises and takes over. And yes, my friends, we are witnessing evil rising to do so before our very eyes.
I suppose some at this point may be thinking, ‘Gee, Brent doesn’t sound very hopeful. Where is his Theology of Hope?’ Please bear with me. I confess that I am not extremely hopeful about stopping evil in its tracks at the moment. Evil exists in our society (it always does in any society) and all signs point to its rising. We may well be entering a period of time unlike any experienced in most of our lifetimes, a period when evil men and women take the reins of power and bring down the veil of darkness. Just how dark things may get I cannot say. But darkness does indeed seem to be on the horizon. To say so is not to express the loss of hope. Rather, it is to acknowledge current trends. It is to acknowledge the same reality that King knew, that from time to time, and for a time, evil, which always exists, gains in power.
Hope, you see, is not the fool’s hope that denies the existence of evil, but the solid ground on which we stand even as it rises. Hope abounds, even when evil seems to gain the upper hand. I for one, have not lost hope in these darkening days. For I know what King knew. Evil exists, and evil may prosper for a time. This is the reality of life in a fallen world. But the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. It bends toward love. And if that is true, and it is, then evil will not endure. It may have its hour, but in the end, it will be cast down. Love and justice will have the final say.
Christian faith proclaims this. It proclaims the Theology of Hope. As a Christian, I believe in the light that shines in the darkness that shall never be overcome. I believe in the God who raises the dead, who can turn the darkest days to the bright morning light. I believe in the day of evil’s destruction and the restoration of all things. I believe in the sun of righteousness that rises with healing in its wings. And I believe that, until that day comes, while the darkness may come from time to time, the darkness will last only a night; everlasting joy will come with the morning.
So what do we do if we live to see days when darkness falls in deepening shades?
There is a great scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Frodo Baggins, having found himself torn from his beloved and peaceful Shire and cast into the center of a cosmic battle between good and evil, laments that such circumstances have come during his lifetime. ‘I wish the ring had never come to me,’ he tells Gandalf, ‘I wish none of this had ever happened.’ Gandalf’s reply is remarkable: ‘So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’ And then he adds these encouraging words: ‘There are other forces at work in this world beside the will of evil…and that is an encouraging thought.’
Indeed it is. This is why we can have faith that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice and love. Because there is One who does the bending: the God of love and justice.
And so, when evil days come, we cling to hope. We persevere. We endure. And we work. We speak truth. We strive for justice. We live in such a way that the world sees an alternative to the madness taking place around us. We show the world a different future as we serve as signposts pointing to better days. As Gandalf suggested, we do the best with the time given to us. And we believe that God will use that time, and our efforts, to bring about better days.
That is what Christian faith does when darkness falls. It holds, as King did, to the Theology of Hope.
And waits for morning.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
