What is Hope?

Christian hope is not idealistic in the sense of being unattainable desire. It doesn't make sense that any hope should be unattainable desire. In our hearts, the idea that hopeful things cannot be reached often creeps in; in cynicism we criticise ourselves and others as wanting too much and wanting impossible things. God asks us to open our mouths and He will fill them (or else it was hands, but bear with me), so why should we not be even radically hopeful? Do we believe He exists? I see Satan's influence creeping in when we are not incredibly hopeful, so hopeful that we seem insane to those weighed down and blinded by cynicism.

Still, though I said that about radical hopefulness, I believe that hope is, should be, realistic longing and yearning. The thing we hope in ought to be possible, indeed. The thing that makes it look radical is that the possibilities we as Christians believe in look fairytale-ish from our earthly standpoint.

Ultimately Christian hope looks forward, believing that 'Death is swallowed up in Victory.' In fact, the hope of the Christian is like believing it has happened, as if stepping into the Eternal Moment that C. S. Lewis talks about, seeing all things stretched out underneath, the Map of the History of Reality laid out so that the End (new Beginning) can be seen. Perhaps that is because the Spirit in us brings us up into that knowledge, into the certainty of the is-but-not-yet, this story's perfect ending.

I feel as if, because of my affluent life here, I see this vision more imperfectly. To those who really suffer greatly, the fact that there needs to be justice (that good ending) is stark. It seems that due to affluence, the Western church has largely lost needing to be radically like Christ. The church lost its zeal, and must recover it.

So I ask Christians: Do we believe in God and all of Who He is, and what that means? Do we believe in the story He tells us about Himself, us and Reality? Do we, if the answer to the first question is yes, have that hope in the trajectory? It is our fire. God, His thereness, is our great fuel.

Character of the Happy Warrior by Wordsworth

Character of the Happy Warrior 

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
—It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright;
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower:
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable—because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
—'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
—Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
—He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:—
'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,—
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not—
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape or danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.

--

Critical Condition of YouTube made mention of this as I randomly forayed back into her corner of the internet- I hadn't been watching her for a long while now, thinking I wouldn't be particularly interested. It was wrong that I wouldn't be interested, needless to say, at least because of this poem and the thoughts in her head that made her think of it.

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about a lot recently- the virtuous man. I have been trying to remember the images of beautiful virtue and oldsiness that pervaded my sense of how things ought to be as a child. I was more in touch with it then... I hadn't tried for so many years to understand the mind of the modern world. If I could regret anything, it might be that I had tried to comprehend and get into the modern culture's head, though it may prove useful.

We need to decide: do we believe in this picture above, and others like it about other things? Or do we believe in this false equality, this equalisation of all things, this lack of morality and virtue? Do we believe in a colourless, odourless, senseless world of grey drudgery? At least, that is how I see it, but I will have to expound on that later, I assume.

To Be Actually Virtuous - Considering Nicomachean Ethics

...it is more characteristic of virtue to do good than to have good done to one, and more characteristic to do what is noble than not to do what is base; and it is not hard to see that giving implies doing good and doing what is noble, and taking implies having good done to one or not acting basely.

- The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, translated by Sir David Ross

One is not good simply by doing no evil. At least it is not virtuous simply not to be doing evil. One could conceivably be doing nothing but lying about, eating and sleeping (though according to some that might be quite enough like 'doing evil'). People who do not do evil may simply not have the opportunity or inclination to do it and that means nothing to whether they could resist temptation when it butted its ugly head.

A man who is virtuous is likely to be able to resist temptation; he has a strengthened will, strengthened by the exercise that doing-good is. He is a man who could be trusted to be able to do what is needed - a man you can really depend on - because clearly he has been able to defy his whims already.

Of course some people appear to do good things who find it easy to do them; who do not have to ‘mortify the flesh’ to do those things. So, as with courage where you must be afraid to be able to be brave, so with virtue you must be reluctant to do whatever good you must do for it even to be virtue, and for the doing of it to produce a change in you- to strengthen you into greater resolve later.

Temperance and the Intemperate - Considering Nicomachean Ethics

...as the child should live according to the direction of his tutor, so the appetitive element should live according to rational principle. Hence the appetitive element in a temperate man should harmonize with the rational principle; for the noble is the mark at which both aim, and the temperate man craves for the things he ought, as he ought, and when he ought; and this is what rational principle directs.

- The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, translated by Sir David Ross
The ‘rational principle’ is the parent of the adult, mature person. If you do not let yourself be ruled by reason, you cannot yet be considered mature, or adult. Ideally, the child grows up to become self-ruled; to cast off the just bands of his parents, so to speak.

Until you submit to reason ('the rational principle'), you cannot be trusted; nothing will contain you but other men and authorities, or you will only appear to be contained by the fact that you are lazy and unambitious.

Of course it is not right that people should assume a person is not mature if they happen to disagree. But it is perfectly natural that a person who cannot govern himself should find out that nobody will depend on him- one would hope that would be the natural consequence, and that he would mind it, but often people don't. To find himself abandoned by people of good self-government and reason is not surprising. One should always be curious why one is being ignored; perhaps it is because one is immature.

However, so also the others may ignore you because they are not mature and find your self-government a hindrance to license- indeed ‘intemperate’ people do find mature people an irritating chastisement simply by the mature people being- mature people seem usually to do everything so differently from childish people. In being temperate, temperate people are a living accusation of all who are not like them, and thus are often disliked.

Courage, Bravery - Considering Nicomachean Ethics

...the end which courage sets before itself would seem to be pleasant, but to be concealed by the attending circumstances, as happens also in athletic contests; for the end at which boxers aim is pleasant—the crown and the honours—but the blows they take are sitressing to flesh and blood, and painful, and so is their whole exertion; and because the blows and the exertions are many the end, which is but small, appears to have nothing pleasant about it. And so, if the case of courage is similar, death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and against his will, but he will face them because it is noble to do so or because it is base not to do so.  And the more he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful.

- The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle, translated by Sir David Ross

Yet ironically courage makes you willing to die, so courage being the road to happiness cannot mean a happiness that requires still being alive. It must be a happiness that is looking beyond this life.

So the point of courage is to bear the most fearsome and painful things well, and the most frightening thing to us is death, the ultimate thing that courage does for us, so to speak, is to make us still capable in the face of death; to allow us our faculties and wherewithal when we could give up. But then, if its most ultimate use is in the face of nonexistence, so to speak, what is the point of it at all? If it led us to accept death, and we did die, it would in a sense be some horrible, crude joke- a thing promising good but instead bringing nothing at all- even our own annihilation.

So if the goal of life is to live, what is the value of virtue if such a virtue as courage so to speak leads to death? If it is a virtue in the face of pain and ultimately death, what is the point of it? Those who dismiss needing to be virtuous because we all die would then be right- there would be no point to be courageous in the face of death; it would perhaps be more ‘virtuous’, if virtue were the road to the happy life, to avoid death; to live a life of caution and safety, avoidance of ills and pain (which I think we have actually come to).

The irony in this idea that we should avoid evils is that to really have a chance at avoiding illness and pain, it seems we first must bear it; we do not become stronger and more capable of defending ourselves except in going through pain and thus fortifying ourselves against it, like the immune system does, and our bodies do not become stronger and more able to withstand injury and illness except by being put through the very things that cause it pain (though perhaps in a more controlled way). So the way nature works, it seems that courage in the face of pain is rewarded, and those who are Christians believe that courage in the face of death is rewarded. Perhaps this is to come later in Nicomachean Ethics that living here cannot be the reward for the virtuous man, but I don’t know what his answer could be, then, except some belief in the Halls of our Fathers after we die. But I don’t know much about the Greeks’ worldview(s).