On Hope

Part 3, God Can Make a Way Where There Is No Way

Having considered agency attributions from the perspective of religious hope, let's turn to pathway attributions.

Again, pathway attributions concern our ability to see a realistic and viable route to the goal we are pursuing. If we see a pathway we have hope. But if no path can be found we lose hope.

Snyder's theory makes perfect sense if we restrict ourselves to material causes and effects. Hope for me, as a human being, is restricted to paths that I, as a human being, can travel. But things change dramatically when we enter the realm of religious hope. For God, being God, can always find a path should he choose to open one for me. As the old saying goes, "God can make a way where there is no way."

Biblically, think of Ezekiel 37, the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. The prophet stands in a valley full of bones. The Lord asks, "Son of man, can these bones live?" The prophet can't see a pathway. Deadness has no potential. There is no hope. So the prophet replies, "Lord, only you know." And the Lord responds: "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! You will live!'" God makes a way where there was no way.

A related issue here is how God rehabilitates agency attributions as well. God gives me power. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Even when I lack agency I can rely on the Holy Spirit to assist and empower me.

This is one of the the reasons the prosperity gospel thrives in marginalized contexts. In many ways the prosperity gospel is simply a religious application of Snyder's hope theory. With God we always have agency and pathways. This supercharges hope, and that hope, per Snyder's theory, creates motivational energy, vitality, passion, optimism, and zest in moving toward our goals. And this is exactly what empirical studies have shown, how the prosperity gospel provides hope and motivation to despairing and demoralized people, especially in Third World contexts. This is why, though a critic of the prosperity gospel on theological grounds, I've expressed appreciation for its psychological power and appeal among the poor, something I think elite and privileged people frequently miss.

In many ways, all this simply confirms Snyder's theory. But it also short-circuits the theory and raises other questions. By short-circuiting the theory I mean that the minute God is introduced into the hope equation the hope equation becomes superfluous. Why engage in agency attributions when you have God on your side? Why envision pathways when God can make a way where there is no way? God, in this view, simply replaces hope, wholesale. God is hope. Full stop.

No doubt this is the power of religious hope, its capacity to transcend the material horizon, a capacity for hope where there is no hope. And if the human mind runs on hope, then in many ways the human mind is inherently religious. A diet of nihilism and hopelessness isn't good for us. This is a big part of the story I tell in The Shape of Joy.

But it also raises some questions. First, there is the old Freudian question I try to tackle in The Authenticity of Faith. Do we believe in God for psychological reasons? We need hope and so we posit some supernatural agent to fill that need. Which raises the question of false or delusional hope. Given that God is always, from the perspective of hope, a get out of jail free card, can this card get played in ways that are dysfunctional? A pastoral example here is praying for a miracle. The possibility of a miracle means there is always a pathway, always a hope. But might praying for or depending upon a miracle become problematic in some cases?

Consider some examples. A child is facing a treatable medical condition. But the parents reject modern medicine. So the parents forgo treatment and pray for a miraculous healing. And the child dies. Is hope a problem here?

Consider also the COVID era, how some churches remained open, defiantly so, by making appeals to God's miraculous protection. No masks, social distancing, or vaccines were needed. God would protect. Is hope a problem here?

We can think of other examples. But consider also this question. Say all material means have been exhausted. You reach the end of the road for human power, capability, technology, and ingenuity. All pathways available to humans have been exhausted. Can you, in that moment, reach for religious, metaphysical hope? Is it okay to pray for a miracle in that moment, as a last resort? I expect opinions would differ. Some atheists might say, well, in that instance, no harm no foul. But others of a more stoical mindset might argue that grimly facing the facts and reconciling oneself to a hopeless situation is the better course.

My point is raising these questions is to return to a point I made in the first post, how your ontology circumscribes your hope. Your vision of reality will affect how you think about miracles and the advisability of praying for them when all hope is lost. And even among those who believe in miracles there are issues that need to be discerned, like forgoing medical care in favor of divine intervention. Can you trust too much in science? Some might say so. Can you trust too much in miracles? Some might say so.

But back to the subject at hand. No matter how you think about such questions, introducing God into our agency and pathway attributions blows hope theory up. Once God arrives agency and pathway attributions are always open. All the switches get flipped toward hope. But once that happens we have to enter into theological discussions about what is appropriate to expect of God by way of answer or intervention. Which means that hope has shifted away from the psychological to the theological. And psychology doesn't have a lot to say about God.