Latest / Centrally Speaking / Hope in a World of Despair

Transcript

Hope in a World of Despair · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the central Schweinfeld Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Our topic today is looking for hope in a world of despair.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Our world is in such a need of hope today, and we seem to be uh forgetting where hope comes from and are uncertain about how to uh find it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh former president uh Barack Obama who said uh as uh while we breathe, we hope.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if hope is such an important thing, it's worth taking some time to think about uh where does hope come from and uh how can we find it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm joined uh by Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Steven Vandehovel, associate professor of systematic theology at Evangelische Theologische Faculteit in Leuven, Belgium.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's also the newly appointed director of the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics, uh also known as uh ILSA, and we'll refer to that uh throughout this uh podcast as ILSA from now on.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: This is a research institute at the ETF in Leuven, Belgium, which exists to help build a more just and sustainable society uh for everyone.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it does so by developing innovative thinking and new research from a Christian perspective on key issues of leadership and ethics, of which one of these uh is hope.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also multidisciplinary, uh collaborating with philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and dialogues with uh academics, but also uh comes to uh concrete practices.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Steven, we're very glad that you can join join us today.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much, Drake.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to be on the show today.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about this word hope, and you've spent a long time uh uh investigating this, and uh scholars also at ILSE have been studying uh this word.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how long have you been studying the word hope?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, the word and concept of hope.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: We've been studying it since 2016.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the research is in its fifth year now, and I'm glad that you mentioned the interdisciplinary nature of our research institute, ILSE, because we do work as theologians together with economists, uh, also at other institutes, for example at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and also recently with psychologists such as Professor Anthony Schioli, who's based in Boston in the US.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And really, this interdisciplinary research is crucial for the study of such an elusive, multifaceted concept of hope.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: What led you to study hope?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Why did you seize on the uh this idea?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, we were asked, we were invited to become part of a research consortium about this very concept.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I already mentioned the economist at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Together with them, we were teamed up.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: We were asked by uh a philanthropic institution called the Goldsmanning Foundation to team up and to study this concept together, economists and theologians uh coming together to give the world more insights on hope.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, that's how it started.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And about how many people have been working on this word uh hope over these last uh four or five years?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, within our group of researchers, it's oh I think it's about eight people, but of course, uh this is just one small uh hub of research in in a world that that does uh a lot more of research as in other places as well.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: How about starting with a definition of hope uh for the average person?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: How would you define it for the person walking on the street?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in its core, hope is really simply a desire with a probability.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's something that you want, but you're not exactly sure if you will get it.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that probability can either be very high or very low.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It can be between zero and one, so to say.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's something we want, but we are not sure if it will come to pass or not.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It can be likely, unlikely, or anything in between.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a sense of improbability with it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, is it helpful to uh think of hope uh in various uh with various gravity?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh like I hope that uh my wife has uh created a nice meal for me tonight, or I hope that uh uh there's not much traffic out on the road versus I I hope my mother makes it through surgery uh today.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is it helpful to think of hope in that way, or uh would you still use the same uh uh definition?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can use the same definition, but indeed, I should say, the gravity is very different.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a helpful distinction to make between mundane hopes and big hopes.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and essentially they have the same structure, but they are very different in uh in the sense that their relations to our relations to our existential concern is very different.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: When you hope that your mother makes you through surgery, you are dealing with something that touches at the very core of your being.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, you know, your desire for a for a nice meal is of a rather more mundane kind, indeed.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the structure of hope is actually uh similar in the sense that it entails a desire for something about which you don't have certainty.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that certainty level might be between, as you say, zero to one or uh zero to a hundred percent.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you know we have some uh far-flung hopes.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh some are probably listening to this podcast today, probably support a sports team that doesn't have a chance in the world uh to win uh, let's say the uh uh Champions League, uh, or uh if uh you're in Europe or if uh you're here, uh the World Series.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but we still hope.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: But if if there's any probability that one cannot attain it, then there is a sense of of a need for hope, right?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, yes.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when it comes to sports, it's never say never.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yes, it's it it's uh more seriously though, uh someone who is trying to resuscitate a person, uh there may be a very slim chance of that happening, but he or she nevertheless continues doing that out of a passionate desire for that to happen and a very slim chance.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, you know, if I plan to step on my bicycle and visit a friend living nearby, it's very unlikely that there will be obstacles hindering that that particular goal.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it it could happen, something could happen.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the bandwidth with which we're dealing with the rather extreme.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the bandwidth could be rather extreme uh uh uh with this.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: But it seems as if uh as we've as we've uh developed this project further and investigated further, that there seem to be uh uh a number tapping into this from non-Christian as well as Christian perspectives.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: You've had uh uh the Goldschmidting Foundation uh uh get behind this work.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you could say just a word about uh the Goldschmidting uh Foundation for People, Work and the Economy and how they've partnered with uh ILSA in this scholarship.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, indeed, I can, yes.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Goldsmitting Foundation, indeed, for people, work, and economy, these are the foci of the foundation, has been active since 2015.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they uh seek to essentially create new thinking about this issues: people, work, and the economy, new ways in which we think about work, about economic life, and very important in that is a focus on sustainability, on human flourishing in the broad sense of the word, not just gross domestic products going up in a country, but but full deployment of the human person.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um and we have been, as I mentioned earlier, we've been invited by them to participate in this research project on hope.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: We were very happy to do that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have another project with them on relational anthropology.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so um we are very happy to partner with them in the various themes that they want to investigate and that they see as pertinent for um yeah, a better ordering of society and economy.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: I find it interesting as uh you've done some of your research on hope that it has a variety of different dimensions to it.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and some of uh what you've uh come up with, a hope barometer: cognitive, emotional, virtuous, social, institutional, economic, uh, spiritual.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's a multi number of different uh subjects, uh, all tapping into this uh this one word.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh why don't we explore maybe one or two of those, uh, if you don't mind?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe you can talk about how your research has um surfaced an economic level with uh or an economic uh input into hope.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um can you say something about that further?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in economics, hope is often seen as consumer confidence.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is uh it is a way of measuring you know if people have enough trust in the good economic fortune and their willingness to invest, you know, either by buying consumer goods or by investing in your businesses and ventures.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that is one way of looking at it.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's also other ways of looking at the connection between hope and economics, uh, particularly in development economics.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of excitement, exciting research has been done, especially when it comes to the really the poorest of the poor, people who don't have food security, so they don't know if they'll eat tonight.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And among these people, the hope horizon is very short, it's just limited to that next meal.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they live from meal to meal, completely focused on the here and now, and losing the ability to sort of plan ahead.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then everything beyond that next meal is essentially a luxury.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And a big problem for development economics was always well, how do we break out of what's called the poverty trap?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where if you give input, if you give people money, if they give them food, they'll consume the food, they'll spend the money on the next meal.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: But over the long term, their fortunes don't really improve.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because they can't, because their hope horizon has of necessity been too limited.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's no uh no fault of theirs, that's just how the situation has forced them into.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a new approach has been launched in development economics that should that that tried a new and different intervention, and that showed that things can actually change.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Very famous research has been done in Bangladesh about this.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the participants are the poorest of the poor, they were not given money, they were not given food, they were given rather means of production, very simple, a few goats or a sewing machine, and they were given some small training on how to use these and how to make money.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it actually had an amazing impact.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um, most of the people in uh most of the participants were able to exponentially grow these small um grow from these small tokens and develop a thriving business in which they were able to feel both themselves and their family.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this is uh this is very important because that shows that uh when you can stimulate hope and uh and you give people a sort of a basic security and which allows them to hope beyond their next meal, great things can happen.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that is really opens the eyes, certainly, of development economists, to the importance of hope.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it allows economics to look at at hope as motivating beyond just consumer trust, and I think much more uh to say about the economic life.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's very interesting.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I almost wonder as we as we think about that, uh, whether a Western uh uh viewpoint on hope uh meets needs to be discussed differently than uh one who is living from uh hand to mouth.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Would you agree with that?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh yes, I would.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: In the literature, we distinguish between various sorts of hope.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So many people in the third in what we now call the third world, they have survival hopes.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and and then those are very pertinent to them for very understandable reasons.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have, in a sense, the luxury to have other hopes as well.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the hope for meaning, hope for mastery.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it's like a a pyramid, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if your first survival needs are not met, you cannot proceed beyond that.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And in the West, we typically can.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that gives this course a very different tone in the West.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: You talked about a hope for mastery and a hope of meaning.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, could you explain a little bit more about that?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: When so we we just talked about uh hope as a as a survival hope.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is just uh indeed what you said, the hand-to-mouth uh hope, the hope that you'll have food in your hands, the future mouth.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when you look at hope from a master perspective, it's for example the hope that drives you to apply for an education and then to move to the basis of that, so that you get into a profession and that you're able to move beyond just survival and truly make it, as we say, in a particular profession, and develop stable and future for yourself and your family.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, meaning hope, that's something we all do.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's essentially the hope that what we do is not just beneficial for our survival, not even just for our mastery, but has a meaning beyond that for our community, for God, if we are religious.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: We looked at uh, I had to say a few things about economic perspective on hope.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: How about a psychological one?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Is that so also part of your hope barometer, as you call it uh at the um at Ilsa?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, indeed.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's one of the dimensions we look at, and that's because uh a lot of the research on hope has actually been done from the perspective of psychologists, particularly in the last decades.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be the field of philosophy and theologians, these were the people that looked at hope.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: But in recent decades, there's been a tremendous upsurge in the psychological research of hope.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And particularly, it's the tradition of positive psychology, cognitive psychology, and their hope is looked at as a process of setting goals and then also to discern the various ways of reaching these goals.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: This approach has become very popular through the work of Rick Snyder, for example, who wrote a popular bestseller entitled The Psychology of Hope, you can get here from here to there.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is an important uh way of approaching hope, but at the same time, and that's why it's only one of the dimensions in our hope a barometer, it is quite limited.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because it looks at hope essentially as a form of resilience, which it is, but hope is also more than that.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, we we absolutely recognize the importance of the research on hope done by psychology, uh, and we seek to incorporate that indeed in our measuring instrument of hope, the hope barometer.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to add something.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, many people will say that hope is not enough if it's just a passive expectation of something to happen, and that's correct.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually a danger that we look at hope as something that has to happen to us and that we have no agency over, like hoping that tomorrow will be a good day for weather.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of hope is not really empowering us to take action, and it should, because good hope has that empowering ability.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: It is that ability to formulate goals and find out ways, find out ways to get there.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, hope realizes that uh you can't always influence everything, and there's an element in which you have to trust others, you have to trust God, and there's a certain givenness to life that's inescapable.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And hope is really the art of discerning what you can do when and where.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: But it seems as if it's a almost an entirely different uh uh approach to the word.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, wouldn't you agree from a psychological uh viewpoint rather than an economic one?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, not necessarily.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, um there's a certain overlap.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh both the economists and the psychologists of hope see hope as a desire, uh as something to be uh attained and something that has an effect on our current actions.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, in that sense, uh there's um there's shared ground.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the disciplinary uh approach is very, yes, that's true.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we won't have time on this uh podcast to talk about uh all the other uh dimensions, uh, but I'm curious why did you choose uh these seven uh dimensions uh for uh your look at hope?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um just for the listening audience, cognitive, uh meaning something mental, emotional, virtuous, social, institutional, economic, and spiritual.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you select those seven?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's where the research up until now is.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh we we we investigated what's been done on hope, and we discerned these dimensions that were all researched by others already, these dimensions of hope.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we felt that this way was the best way to summarize current research done on hope.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not to say that there's not an eighth dimension, although, of course, being Christian, it's very nice that uh the number seven that we can keep that uh with us.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's quite possible that over time we will uh discern an eighth or a ninth or a tenth dimension to hope, but currently uh we best summarize the research done on hope by means of these seven dimensions.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say to somebody who uh might uh think uh you're making uh hope too complex?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: How about just expectation or desire for something?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh isn't that enough?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, at its core, hope simply denotes a desire, a positive expectation for something to happen.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in most cases, that's all there is to it.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just mentioned the example of me jumping on a bike to either visit a friend or perhaps go to the store to buy some fruit, you know, and and and you can analyze it to death, but at the end of the day, there's not much to it, right?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh however, when it comes to deeper life-orienting hopes, there is there is more to it.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh while I cycle to the shop to buy my fruit, I may also reflect on my deepest life goal, you know, which might be to live a life in which I make a positive impact on the life of other human beings.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and so this life goal is much more complicated and has various components, uh, and truly um requires the various disciplines for me to truly investigate that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because at our core we are hoping beings.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote a book entitled Homo viator, which means the hoping person, hoping being.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And his core claim is really also already expressed in that title.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: We are essentially hoping beings.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: We hope.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we do.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're always future directed, we're always anticipating something that's essential to the human person.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when you when you go to such a depth at analyzing it, you you know, you can still say that you know it's the elements of expectation and desire are present, but it's become, you know, we have we we we we have we have left the realm of the mundane here.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: In your research uh that you're conducting now, are you seeing a rise in uh people looking for hope, uh particularly with coronavirus uh pandemic and then uh problems with um uh racism uh around the world?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Are you seeing an increase uh in people's uh desires uh for hope?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we see uh well we we may not necessarily see an increase in positive hope, but what we do see is that hope and the importance of hope is front and center in people's minds again, in multiple ways.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that is because hope is also a crisis emotion.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is in the context of loss, really, of something or someone, that you experience the urgency of hope.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the unreflective day-to-day living, we take many things for granted that this crisis actually took away.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned traveling to the shop to get some fruit, but that's quite a different endeavor nowadays than it used to be because I need to be mindful of how I grab stuff, people are wearing masks, the money exchange is preferably through cards only, no longer cash, you know.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is a way where you suddenly realize a hope that used to be unreflective.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mundane, uh, you know, it is something that that now takes a lip more.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, you're more aware of the fact that you know that all the steps you gotta take to reach that goal, but also more socially.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people have lost their jobs, we have to socially distance even from our loved ones.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: People are ill with coronavirus in hospital.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, in smaller and larger ways, people experience crisis, and in this crisis, hope plays a very important role.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, and we should say this because it's up until now it's been about the positiveness of hope, and hope is a positive emotion, but there's also despair, and that's also part of the title of this podcast.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And people experience despair as well as they experience hope.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the difference really that's perhaps something to talk about a bit between hope and despair, and that's really rather simple.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: When you hope, you have a positive expectation of the future, whereas when you despair, you also have an expectation of the future, but it's negative.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: You fear the thing that you think is going to come your way.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: So someone with despair doesn't see it as probable that you know you will get your job back or you will leave the hospital.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: He or she expects bad things without wanting them, and that's the negative side of hope, side of despair.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's also unfortunately front and center in the lives of many people.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and uh here in the church, we we uh and the community we're we're seeing uh more of this sense of despair.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe you might comment on that as someone living over in uh uh in Belgium, uh Netherlands.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Are you seeing a rise of despair?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh I think that our situations are a bit different.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have uh a different system where people will get fired.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's more social security essentially for them.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so uh without knowing all the ins and out of the situation in the US, I get the feeling that it's uh it's rather more urgent if you lose your job over there than you do over here.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: There may be a difference.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: However, uh it doesn't do away with the fact that we all live through this crisis, and if you lose your job, whether there's a safety net or not, it's still a crisis, it's still a very deep existential problem that you're going through, and uh the economy is slowing down.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's the case in the US, that's the case in the Netherlands and in Belgium, that's the case everywhere.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's uh you know, there's also, in a very real sense, a limit to how long this social security um net can hold on.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not an automatic that it's there, someone has to fund it one way or another.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's there may be gradations, there may be nuanced differences, but we're all in that sense, the whole world is one right now.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're all going through this Russia, China, US, Europe, Africa, Latin America, we're all we're all facing this crisis.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the Christian church has a definition of hope.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this truth revolves around the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Many in the church uh each week uh recite uh the words of the Apostles' Creed.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering how uh your study of hope uh might intersect uh with the Christian hope, uh, which is uh the expectation uh that uh that Christians have.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on the face of it, the Christian hope is just like any other hope, you would say.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: It it denotes a positive expectation of the future.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's very meaningful, this vision that we hear about in church that we read in the Bible, because it promises essentially justice.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where you to sum up the leading concern, uh, you know, the um the movement that you see in the eschatological texts in the Bible, it's all essentially about God doing justice to the oppressed of his people, but essentially all people are oppressed.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's about justice and love.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what the Christian church has responded differently to this expectation.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: With some, it leads, quite honestly, to a kind of passive resignation, the hope that someday all will be well.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: With others, it leads more to activism, but especially in liberal churches, there's not much beyond that activism, that that's just it, and there's no real expectation anymore of something that has to come from the other side as well.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think the beauty and the power, but also the complexity of the Christian message is in between, in having this expectation of God's just and love, loving future and trusting that it's there, but it also ought to stir us on, to spur us on in the present to work penultimately for that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we can never realize that on ourselves, absolutely not, but we can and we should somehow prepare the way for that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's our mission.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the attention that we're living in uh in this uh stage, you could say, of the kingdom of God.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, being there and not yet, you know, there it sounds just from your comments.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm listening into uh this triad that uh Paul brings up in First Corinthians, uh, faith, hope, and love being uh all three intertwined uh one uh with the other, the sense of expectation that's wanted, uh, but also uh uh a sense of uh security that uh the Christian hope uh gives for those with faith.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, that's a very important triad because that shows that it's not neutral what we hope for.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: When you start out with the very general definition that we started with, you know, hope as a positive expectation, that essentially says nothing about what kind of expectation.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It could be a very immoral expectation or a false expectation, and the Christian expectation is neither immoral nor false, it's a it's a justified expectation.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the uh faith dimension, you could say, if you were to work with that triad of faith, hope, and love.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a moral uh dimension, and that's denoted by the love element, and so and and and this is so it's the quality of the expectation that truly makes the Christian perspective on hope unique.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have a very radical hope for love and justice to reign eternally and to make the world right, and that is uh a very empowering message, and it has proven itself to be a very empowering message.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: We stand on the shoulders of many Christian heroes who did great things in the service of this expectation.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Any uh one that you particularly like to uh mention at the end of this uh uh interview at all, uh Steven?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you have given me an open door to talk about my my personal theological hero, Dietrich von Hoeffer.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh the German theologian and uh pastor who became part of the resistance in Nazi Germany, and um who not only helped smuggle out Jews, but also took part actively in the resistance against the Nazi regime and who was called for that and hanged towards the end of the war.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: He is someone who I also take from this concept that I mentioned of the penultimate.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that he worked on in his ethic, which he wrote during that dark and difficult time.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was keenly aware of the fact that we could not ourselves uh establish the kingdom of God.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, he did not want to give in to the resignation that he saw all around him.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted us to be prophetic witnesses to this coming future of God's justice and law.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's in the way he lived and gave testimony to that vision.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very inspiring example.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's a very good example.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for sharing.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: I understand you have a uh e-book that's coming out, it'll be a free e-book.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, can you uh share a little bit uh about that and how uh our listeners might be able to take advantage of uh this publication?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a collection that I edited uh in which actually uh scholars from many different disciplines reflect on hope.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's only one chapter on hope and theology in the book.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the other chapters are on hope and philosophy and economics, hope and ecology.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very important connection as well.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hope and development economics, it's all there.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a whole part, the first part, historical perspectives on hope, which treats, you know, the treatment of hope in ancient Greek all the way through modernity and post-modernity.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's uh an open access publication, so it's freely downloadable.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the link to that download will appear in the description with this podcast online and freely uh downloadable for anyone who is interested in this topic.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, congratulations on the publication of the ebook and uh also on your new appointment as the director of uh this uh research institute, uh institute of leadership and social ethics.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Steven, we've been very glad to have you on this uh this program today and wish you uh uh the best in your future studies uh and uh and work with Ilsa and at uh at ETF in Lothan.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh thank you very much, Drake, and all the best to you two and the great work that you're doing there.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to Centrally Speaking, a broadcast ministry from the Central Schwankfelder Church in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: In this time of uh the coronavirus, uh please look to our website uh for times uh and services.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we are uh complying with the CDC uh guidelines uh so that we are safe but able to uh worship on Sunday morning.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: So please uh look at the website uh or call the office uh for service times.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: We also broadcast uh via Facebook Live uh nine o'clock on Sunday mornings, you're welcome to join us for that.