A Theology of Hope (& Failure)
I am
thinking about hope, promise, and anticipation this week. I’m also pondering
failure, disillusionment, and disappointment … and especially the connection
between both of these things.
Here are the four scenes that prompting my brooding.
SCENE
ONE: This Sunday TV
Pastor Robert Schuler interviewed two bright-faced founders of an organization
to mobilize youth the change the world. Schuler hardly got
to say a word. They were virtual fountains of optimism, bubbling effervescently
about digging wells for African villagers and solving the problem of the world
as if they had personally had invented Christian social action. Their eyes
sparkled as they enthused about how the world can become a different place
because of this positive new youth movement.
SCENE
TWO: This is the
week is the “Personal life of the leader” unit in my senior class. This week
they are required to write recent graduates and find out what “the real story”
is about transition to adult life and the church. It is a “downer week” for them[1]—discovering they will have to pay
for their own Internet access and they find out how much health insurance
really costs. They discover everyone in the church might not think they are as
astonishingly gifted as their parents and professors
thought. Indeed, if this semester is like those in the past, they’ll complain
in my end-of-course evaluation about the “discouraging week” (as if my job
description is to be “encouraging”). They expect to make a gigantic difference
and do so without much opposition—after all, why would people oppose progress?
SCENE
THREE: Obama is
gliding around Indiana this week speaking hope into crowds of swooning young
folk. He speaks the hope-speak language of the young and they chant back, “YES
WE CAN!”
SCENE
FOUR: Yet, consider
at the same time this [paraphrased] conversation with a recent graduate:
“IWU taught me how to change the
world but it failed to teach me something more important—how to fail. I never
failed at anything in high school or college. I assumed I was “awesome” because
my parents and professors always said I was. Awesome shouldn’t fail, so I left
college presuming the world was waiting for me and I would be welcomed as I
brought my enthusiasm to deal with the world’s problems. There was no parade
when I arrived. I
wasn’t just shrugged off—I failed. Not once but twice already. Nobody ever taught me how to fail. My
self-esteem crashed and so did my faith., God had
broken his promise—”to make me prosper and not to harm me.” How could he let me
fail? What happened to all those prayers that “Jesus has gone
to prepare a place of service for you—just trust Him. “ I trusted him
yet I failed. God lied to me. At least my parents, youth pastors, and professors
lied. Life is not full of easy successes like I had in
college. So I am trying to pick up the pieces of my
life. I’m learning how to deal with failure with no training. I’m trying to not get bitter. I’m trying to regain my faith. All those
youth retreats, youth conventions, college chapels, residence hall devotions
and classes taught me lots of things—but they never taught me how to handle
failure. I’m learning that on my own. Please pray for me—that I’ll survive.”
So what
do you think? Not,
what you think about these still-very-adolescent college students, or the
inadequacy of a college education (we’re working on that) or even the
gullibility of young folk, or Obama’s approach to
them. But, what do you think about how the church should prepare for this
wave of idealistic YES-WE-CAN young people who want to change the world? Not what advice you
have for them—they’ll get plenty of that this week from former graduates now
battle-scarred on the front lines of battle. But what
advice do you have for us—the church, in dealing with this coming wave?
How would you advise senior pastors? What would you say to local church board
members or denominational officials? And what should
we say to ourselves about dealing with this very promising and very
promised generation?
So,
what do you think?
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comments for the first few weeks after this posting
Keith Drury
Keith Drury
is Associate Professor of Religion at
[1] Boomers like me tend to want to warn
this generation of the disillusionment that comes from too much hope. We know—we
were the generation who hoped we could bring peace, love
and guitars to all humankind—we succeeded on only one of the three. We are
tempted to tell them “life is tough” and you are the most protected and
entitled generation yet and “real life” is a lot rougher than you expect. We want to warn
that that a steady and slow pace will last—we remember painfully what happened
to the idealists we were raised with. But should we?
Is there a better way? Could they be right? Can
we? Is their “YES WE CAN” mantra I some ways good or
is it a dangerous sign of terrible disillusionment and failure ahead for many
of them? Should Boomers keep quiet on this subject and let the Busters-X
folk who are now in their 30’s do the teaching at this point? After all, when
we were in our 30’s we were already getting in charge—maybe they need to step
up and advise this newer generation under them? But
many of the busters/Xers are cynics—who enjoy poking
fun at the motivational approach of the boomers (hence the success of www.demotivators.com the source of the poster
above. Who will tell them… and what will we tell them? Maybe we just let
them go tramping off to war like the Confederate Army—expecting to defeat the Yakees before winter. They’ll find out soon enough? And what does this say about a “safety net” in the
first ten years of ministry for those entering church work? Enough!
This is too long a footnote already.