Hope: Supreme Unleaded Virtue with Techron™

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung identified two distinct ways that people organize the information that they perceive and thus make decisions from them: thinking and feeling. He also established the fact that people tend to prefer one of these processes over the other. For the record, I am very much a thinker.

Now, this is the second in a series of articles that my friend and pastor Dan Rice asked me to write regarding what have been called the three great Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love (I Corinthians 13:13). Writing an article about faith was a simple task for a thinker, since faith is mostly a positive, lateral extension of empirical thinking and can exist entirely devoid of emotion—in fact, it often exists despite emotion. But hope exists in the nebulous ocean of human emotion.

Hope is a feeling. Since I’m a thinker, I tend to try to find words to describe the world around and inside me. Perhaps this is why I avoid emotional situations; it is so hard to find the words. Yet, where definitions fail, stories and poems and melodies prevail. Thus, out of deference for these arts, I will share here the words of a song by the band Nickel Creek that I believe speaks to the nature of hope.

"The Lighthouse's Tale"

I am a lighthouse, worn by the weather and the waves.

I keep my lamp lit, to warn the sailors on their way.

I'll tell a story, paint you a picture from my past.

I was so happy, but joy in this life seldom lasts.

I had a keeper, he helped me warn the ships at sea.

We had grown closer, 'till his joy meant everything to me.

And he was to marry, a girl who shone with beauty and light.

And they loved each other, and with me watched the sunsets into night.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

She'd had to leave us, my keeper he prayed for a safe return.

But when the night came, the weather to a raging storm had turned.

He watched her ship fight, but in vain against the wild and terrible wave.

In me so helpless, as dashed against the rock she met her end.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

Then on the next day, my keeper found her washed up on the shore.

He kissed her cold face, that they'd be together soon he'd swore.

I saw him crying, watched as he buried her in the sand.

And then he climbed my tower, and off of the edge of me he ran.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

I am a lighthouse, worn by the weather and the waves.

And though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way.

Faith guides. Hope fuels. Love acts. The Lighthouse’s Tale is about a man who has experienced love and tragedy. Faith guided two people to begin to build their lives together, they wholly hoped to be together forever, and they very much loved each other. Yet, the circumstances of life would not allow this condition to be expressed into longevity on this side of death.

When we find that the woman is dead, we understand the terrible pressure of lost hope that the keeper must feel. Again, words fail to do justice to the heartache. It would seem that all hope was lost.

However, faith resisted this onslaught and provided the keeper a means of reuniting the couple (although this means was doubtless a tragic distortion of good sense). The man believed that there was a morrow to this life, and that he had only to hasten that day for himself if he would be with his beloved again. With this, he clearly gained hope for his future with her as he kissed her face and swore they’d be together soon. And as a final act of consummation of his faith, his hope, and his love for her, he joined her in perishing.

This is an illustration of the extremes to which hope can fuel us beyond what we might otherwise be capable of performing. Provide a loving mother with the hope that she might see her estranged daughter again and you can persuade her to perform unimaginable horrors or impossible feats of bravery. Hope, in and of itself is like rocket fuel exploding—it is useless and potentially destructive without the guidance of a jet. With the appropriate directionality, hope (like rocket fuel) can take us to the moon and beyond.

And so, I leave you, dear reader, with one final thought. If Jung is right and we all have a preference toward a particular means of judging the world around us—whether thinking (faith) or feeling (hope)—let us not ever discount the perspectives of the people who prefer our opposite. In letting thought and faith guide the fuel of hope, we become one in the kind of love that can make a real, lasting difference in the world.