Faith and Hope in These Times
by Alternative Voice Staff
The hope of human brotherhood can only be realized when, and as, the divergent mind religions of authority become impregnated with, and overshadowed by, the unifying and ennobling religion of the spirit—the religion of personal spiritual experience.
~The URANTIA Book, p. 1732
More
than two hundred years ago, Thomas Paine wrote, “Freedom has been
hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the
slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the
irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the
liberty of appearing.” Isn't it interesting to observe how the same
issues plague humankind in cycling redundancy? We find ourselves no
more free than the motley crew of patriots in the eighteenth century
who bore the weight of the great struggle against the British Empire.
In fact, one could argue that our real “freedom” is even less than it
was in times past, but that is a different discussion. What I want to
bring up is the issue of hope and faith amidst these stormy
days.
Today as much as ever, USA citizens, when pressed in some manner, will
rise off their couch to declare proudly their hard-fought liberty to
say “F-you”; to have a rifle in their closet; to eat whatever they
want; and to listen to, watch, and be entertained with whatever they
choose. They will declare their hard-earned right to carve out their
little bubble of life, no matter what consequences it may have on
others. Ugh! If not pressed, they will flip to the sport of the season,
turn to the local-opinion print, pour another cocktail, swallow another
anti-depressant, and fade away again into hard-earned apathetic
complacency. The hope for a better day has been numbed out by the
conditioned lethargy of a nation's people and the politicians passing
gas in the back rooms.
When hope is finished, there is nothing left on the plate and we will
starve. Today a person has a little bread on the table, but what is
tomorrow to bring? There is little these days to guarantee the job and
money flow in the future. There are people going hungry in the wealthy
nations as well as the poor. That great hope our country once offered
to the world has eroded and eroded until we have found ourselves left
standing in a daze, wondering if Orwell1 was really a
prophet; wondering what does “freedom” really mean anymore?
Just where
has the experiment of democracy actually led the USA? There used to be
peoples on the planet who lay awake at night, counting the hours until
they could get their chance of a lifetime to escape the circumstances
of their land and build a new life, in this new land. Now our borders
have become tighter and tighter, and more of us awaken to the fact that
the dream of yesterday is no more. Is a man safer in a locked house?
Can we have hope in the world around us? When you look at the cold,
hard data about the planet's oceans and rivers; when we cough from the
big-city air, and hundreds of thousands die each year from lung disease
and asthma; when one becomes aware that the food we consume is filled
with poisons (while few have the choice to avoid it for organic and
healthier alternatives), it sure can get discouraging. The data goes on
and on.
From a purely scientific perspective our planet is going down fast.
True, you can read the propaganda reports from pseudo scientists paid
for by those in power who are suppressing what is actually happening in
the world. Amongst a long list of prefabricated statements they say,
“The earth changes are natural cycles.”
Who speaks for the voice of the masses who yearn for their brethren,
split by borders—from North to South Korea, from India to Pakistan,
from Palestine to Israel? It isn't the common people who choose the
warring between nations and tribes; it is always sponsored by another
force, a political one, fueled by fundamentalism, greed, and/or power.
The source of the war is a person and his or her assistants who have
the authority, somehow, to command others to commit atrocities, to stir
up strife, to instigate feuding, to create disorder that they may then
“order.” Our hope lies not in ninety-nine percent of the leaders of the
planet, for they have failed us too often and will continue on a great
scale. There are a few good ones I know of who are working hard for the
common good. If you know of any, please let me know, I'm interested.
I was talking with an old friend on the phone. Since she asked, I
shared from my heart what I see is happening in the world: the breaking
down of the global economic systems, the lack of positive change in
governments, the inbreeding of nationalism, the rising tide of
religious fundamentalism. I wasn't surprised when she was compelled to
counter it with her vision of optimism and hope. (Few are willing to
honestly hear what's happening, because it can be shocking and
unsettling.) “Yes, optimism and hope,” I replied. We must have it. What
are we without it? To have balanced, mature, real
optimism and hope though, for the “modern man,” one needs to have a
basic understanding of what is happening in the world now, and then
what exists above and beyond this material and mind realm. If a hopeful
person is unaware of the troubles happening on the planet, they are in
danger of having that hope undermined and possibly shattered when they
find out.
What will happen to the
activists of the world whose hope lies in saving the earth? If the
earth or the body does crumble by the forces of destruction—be it oil
slicks covering the waters or cottonseed oil in the intestines—would it
all finish there? Is there a greater world to come, a higher vision to
place one's hope upon, a future that can't be stopped from coming to
fruition by humankind's own stupidity? That is the question to ask. If
there is not a greater way available and a brighter future ahead, then
all the anxiety for the earth and our lives will only increase as we
watch her demise before our eyes.
Many people will claim to have hope if asked, but what kind of hope is
it? Rebecca Solnit, in her book From Hope in the Dark: Untold
Histories, Wild Possibilities, makes some helpful distinctions
about different types of hope.2
• “False hope can be a Yes to deprivation, an acquiescence to a lie.”
• “Official hope can be the bullying that tells the marginalized to shut up because everything is fine or will be.”
• “Blind hope faces a blank wall waiting for a door in it to open.… The great liberation movements hacked doorways into walls, or the walls came tumbling down.”
• To add to these is fraudulent hope: “one of the greatest malefactors, even enervators, of the human race”
What is the hope we truly need? A dictionary says hope is: “a
feeling
of expectation and desire combined; a desire for certain events to
happen.” It defines faith as: “reliance or trust in a person or thing.”
I have heard it said, “Hope is human. Faith is divine.”3
Being human means we are partly limited in our perspectives of higher
realities, due to our inherent and conditioned faculties. Increasingly
we must search our deepest selves for inspiration, while maintaining a
sober and balanced perspective of what's happening in the world around.
It takes effort to cultivate long-term hope, and then to nourish a
sublime thought-pattern that grows the seed of faith.
“Is hope—the grandeur of trust—desirable? Then human existence must
constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.”4
The grandeur of trust! Personally, in the moments of facing these
insecurities and recurrent uncertainties, I don't always have the
beaming confidence that all will work out. Yet, I do have confidence
that as we continue to seek the reality of goodness amongst the shadows
of the planet, we can grow in assurance, hope, and then true faith, as
our formless fears diminish.
A decade ago, Marcos, the voice of the indigenous people of Chiapas,
Mexico, proclaimed, “A new lie is being sold to us as history. The lie
of the defeat of hope, the lie of the defeat of dignity, the lie of the
defeat of humanity…. In place of humanity, they offer us the stock
market index. In place of dignity, they offer us the globalization of
misery. In place of hope, they offer us emptiness. In place of life,
they offer us an International of Terror. Against the International of
Terror that neoliberalism represents, we must raise an International of
Hope. Unity, beyond borders, languages, colors, cultures, sexes,
strategies and thoughts of all those who prefer a living humanity. The
International of Hope. Not the bureaucracy of hope, not an image
inverse to, and thus similar to, what is annihilating us. Not power
with a new sign or new clothes. A flower, yes, that flower of hope.”5
I am assured that we are blessed to have an inherent hope within us,
one instilled by our Creator to help us find our way. This divinity
within us is the “wellspring of spiritual attainment and the hope of
divine character…. He is the power, privilege, and the possibility of
survival.…”6
God has given us each a “homing device” to find our way in the dark
times. No doctor will ever discover this mechanism within our physical
bodies, but it is as real as our beating heart. There are forces
working and streams flowing that we can choose to follow into more
whole, healthy, real lives.
This is why I place my trust in God giving us new revelation in the
Fifth and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (The URANTIA Book
and The Cosmic Family volumes,
respectively), the modern redemptive Word, to keep us going when we've
become increasingly disillusioned with the dogmas and institutions of
man. The Will of Heaven is not encased in the ancient teachings of Motse7
2,500 years ago, nor is Ahura Mazda8 gone since the prophet
Zarathustra left. God will never turn His back on the humanist9,
the Buddhist, the militant Islamic, or the self-righteous Christian. He
will never hesitate towards the Taoist or the agnostic. God loves the
communist, the Zionist, the fundamentalist of every creed, way, group,
and religion, and even the buzzing Right and Left wings of the GAD-fly!
No matter what name they may call Him, no matter what intellectual
understanding or misunderstanding a person may hold to, God is
love, He is alive and well, and He has a plan that is happening. In
this we can find sustenance and reason to have hope and faith. In this
manner we will find our true freedom, and once and for all, the Thomas
Paines10 of the planet will no longer have to cry out.
21 My italics
3 Gabriel of Urantia
4 The URANTIA Book, p. 51
5 From the “Fourth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle,” issued 1/1/96. He is also known as Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos.
61 The URANTIA Book, p. 1193
7 Ancient Chinese philosopher who taught universal love and concern.
8 The supreme god in Zoroastrianism.
9 Follower of a philosophical belief system that endorses recognition of a universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, suggesting that the long-term solutions to our problems cannot be parochial.
10 Thomas Paine is considered one of the Founding Fathers and is remembered as an advocate of equal rights, justice, human rights, social welfare, and free expression. ^