For anyone who has grown up in a Christian country, the past week can be a time for reflection on values and purpose. It can be a moment where we find calm away from the rush of our normal lives and re-assess. Any religious festival can provide us with that opportunity, if we are open to that. On religious occasions like Christmas and Easter, people exposed to Western media will read or hear about what The Pope says about the world. So that’s why I heard the Pope’s new message on hope in difficult times. My discomfort about his message meant I shared some thoughts on social media, which generated feedback and dialogue. Rather than repeating myself in comments on those threads, I thought I’d write a post about ‘Christianity and Hope’ on my blog… so here goes.
The Pope’s message seemed to be asking us all to have hope in a better tomorrow. But he went much further than that, when claiming that hope for a materially better situation in the world is a requirement and concomitant with being loving towards others. He wrote:
“Those who love, even if they find themselves in uncertain situations, always view the world with a gentle gaze of hope.”
Let’s assume he is talking about universal and unconditional love, rather than a romantic or filial kind. So he claims to know that every human who experiences that loving mindstate is viewing the world with hope. Like many people who write poetically about hope, he doesn’t define the word. It could be a wish, expectation, sense of possibility, or deeper faith. But let’s assume he is speaking about either an expectation or sense of possibility, which is what many people assume when using the word. How would the Pope presume to know that everyone with unconditional love towards people and wider Life also “always” have an expectation or sense of possibility for a materially better world, where war has ended, poverty has stopped rising, oppression has reduced, deforestation has been reversed, and suchlike? He can’t know that, and so is making an ideological claim about what he thinks people should be. He is adding conditions and prescriptions to the nature of unconditional love. Why he is doing that reflects something about contemporary culture, and could also reflect the power of privilege in distorting spiritual teachings – topics I will return to in a moment.
Wisdom traditions, psychological research, activism, and wider life experience, all demonstrate to me that people who love unconditionally aren’t attached to a positive outcome in the world or needing to feel a positive emotion about that outcome. Instead, unconditional love involves an open heart, no matter what is occurring and what the outcome might be. People who love unconditionally might or might not hope for something materially to arise in future. When tuned into that mindstate, we cannot be disheartened by the abuses, set backs, horrific misfortunes, and bad prognoses. We love, no matter what is occurring or will come to pass. Within Christianity, I have found the teachings of Anthony De Mello powerful on this matter, as well as the contemporary Christian mystic Reverend Stephen Wright, to whom I shall return to before concluding my impromptu Christmas commentary.
Theologies on hope
The question of ‘hope’ is alive in Christian communities as they engage the climate emergency and metacrises of our era. Five years ago, I read some Christian theology on the topic of ‘hope’. I did that after a student told me that his Christian faith instructed him to have hope and therefore he could not conclude that societal collapse is likely, inevitable or already underway. From my recollection, I discovered that there are various interpretations within Christianity of what is ‘hope’ and what it is good, or necessary, to hope for. Some Christians choose to believe the idea of a ‘New Earth’ that is a physical future reality of this world existing without suffering. However, others regard that as reflecting an aversion to Life as we find it, and instead regard the New Earth as a spiritual concept about unifying consciousness. Some people regard ‘hope’ in a Christian sense to refer to a Faith that eventually all things will be OK materially. However, others think such an idea is the opposite of the teachings for us to identify with soul and spirit, not the physical world. These debates aren’t drawing on the words of Jesus in the Gospels but on other Bible writings. And much of that on the bad translations since the King James version, which diminish the mysticism in the prose. For instance, the Greek word translated as “earth” in 2 Peter 3:13 is “γῆ (gē)” which has a range of meanings depending on the context. It includes the idea of an arena of life or consciousness, rather than a physical piece of land or country. That section in 2 Peter is about the whole world being firstly destroyed by fire before the emergence of a New Earth. So it doesn’t make any sense to take that prose as support for envisioning a materially better situation on Earth that will progress from our current state, without the inconvenience of a cataclysm along the way!
As I looked into Christian theology, I concluded that the ‘hope’ of Christian eschatology that made sense to me is something that people often label ‘faith’. I wrote about that in my piece on hope for the Arrow contemplative journal last June. It is a feeling that no matter what happens in life, no matter how painful, there is something meaningful and okay about life, which transcends our understanding of it. That involves an inexplicable feeling of wonder, mystery and gratitude. But not having read Christian theology on hope five years ago, my initial reaction to my student was to question why our current systems of destructive oppressive relationships with each other and the rest of life should restrict our sense of what is possible to hope for. I now know one explanation for that involves our privilege in benefitting from industrial consumer societies as they currently exist, and the Pope’s pronouncement on hope is a stark reminder of that.
Distortions from privilege, progress and patriarchy
The Pope has writers and advisors. Therefore his statement on hope reflects the sub-culture of the Vatican. Compared to how the rest of the world lives, senior persons in the Catholic Church are economically privileged. Therefore, the statement from the Vatican gives us more evidence of how privileged groups can react to bad news. As modern societies continue to break, and suffering spreads, rich people and institutions initially cope better due their greater purchasing power. Things don’t seem so irreparably bad to them. However, as the potential scenario of societal collapse appears in their minds, they sense a greater fall, and more comforts to lose, than less privileged peoples do. They might also subconsciously intuit how such a collapse condemns the systems that confer their current status. Therefore elites are more wedded to the preservation of industrial consumer societies and the systemic exploitation and oppression of others and of life itself than enables their privilege. Just as we see the subjectivity of those in religious authority has nearly always favoured the religious abusers, not the child victims, so we see the same subjective bias favouring the elite, not the exploited, when it comes to world affairs and the metacrisis today.
The Pope’s statement is also a reflection of more general blinkers of modern culture. As I noted above, it is not logical to claim to know the inner worlds of 8 billion people. Therefore, to claim loving people “always” have hope is an ideological claim. It partly arises from the way progress has become a secular religion in modern society. As John Michael Greer explains so well, we have all been taught that humans are in charge of Life, and we are materially progressing forever, with technology being our tool for that. So it is considered heretical and immoral to dismiss this assumption of progress. Another aspect of contemporary culture that appears to be reflected in the Pope’s statement is patriarchy. It is a habit of patriarchy for those in service of institutionalised power to try to shut down difficult emotions, such as sadness and fear, to exclude the possibility of uncontrollability, and to claim what is normal and correct for everyone everywhere. When awakened to the habits of patriarchy, we can see pronouncements about how everyone is, or should be, as fear-based forms of abuse of the fundamental dignity of every person and life form. With this awareness, we can expect that rising anxiety amongst people who have learned to be human within patriarchy will sometimes produce illogical claims about how everyone is or must be. Therefore, with their Christmas message, the Vatican has made an error which follows millennia of distortions of spiritual wisdom by privileged people in patriarchal institutions.
Does this matter? Yes, as there are harmful consequences of influential elites manipulating us to have hope in the future. In past writings on this moodsplaining by elites, I explained how falling back on wishful thinking may be de-radicalising the masses. Instead, the levels of unnecessary suffering and the biophysical predicament can both be recognised as inevitable and ongoing outcomes of destructive systems. Therefore, we can reassess our lives, values, priorities, and theories of change. As the Extinction Rebellion saying goes, we can #RebelForLife!
What to hope for?
My critique of the way hope is used by some commentators does not mean there is no role for creative thinking about what we think is good that we assess is still possible and worth working towards. Since my 2018 DA paper, I encouraged people to actively explore if they can find a ‘Radical Hope’, for what they will work towards after dropping their old hopes. In my book Breaking Together, I took that further, by outlining a philosophical framework for how we can try to enable kinder responses to societal breakdown. But it would be odd to demand such hope from ourselves or other people. Worse, it would become abusive to claim that everyone who has love in their hearts will be radically hopeful. With the benefit of Buddhist teachings, I regard attachment to hope as a delusion. If finding new forms of hope and a positive vision are useful for the way you live your life, to the benefit of yourself, others and wider life, then that’s great for you – but it doesn’t need to be that way for everyone.
Love beyond hope
In an era of societal disruption and collapse, we will benefit from more of us returning to a feeling of universal kindness. Spiritual teachings, spiritual teachers, and spiritual communities could all play a useful role in that process. Or they could do the opposite. That is why I have been so heartened by the involvement of religious leaders in the DA movement, with some attending my leadership course over the last few years (by the way, the deadline for applications to the final two online course offerings is approaching!). One of the drawbacks for most religions is they have tried to capture unconditional loving consciousness in a cultural context, using human concept and language. I reflected on that in the lines in my first musical release, 3 years ago, with the lyrics: “Love is un-editable. Love is freedom’s hum.” Mystical strands of all the major religions point to that reality. No matter their religious affiliation, the mystic is freeing themself from devotion to the false idols of concept and language. The mystic is freeing themself from any piety associated with eloquent ways of claiming what is universal, or self-justifying their community or choices. I have benefitted over the years from meeting many wise people, who relate to the mystical traditions in their religions or cultures. One such person is Reverend Stephen Wright. To celebrate the positive aspects of Christianity at this festive time, I am pleased to share with you a short film with Stephen in the beautiful Lake District. Please treat yourself to a half hour of true insight: FUGUE for a Spiritual Life – Sacred Space Films. Then if you want to hear more from him, I recommend an interview with him by Katie Carr: Spirituality and Deep Adaptation.
Join the discussion at Deep Adaptation Leadership, on LinkedIn.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before the summer of 2023, Jem Bendell was a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership and Founder of the Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria. He was also the Founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum and the co-Founder of the International Scholars’ Warning on societal disruption and collapse. A major transformation in his career began in 2017 as he took a year out to study the latest climate science, and released a Deep Adaptation paper which went viral. A profile of him appeared in GQ Magazine in 2023.
After the release of his book Breaking Together in May 2023 (available as a free download), he decided to leave employment as a full Professor in the UK. At the age of 50, he entered a new phase in life, where the development of a regenerative farm school in Indonesia and playing devotional music for groups became his main focus. In addition, he writes essays on collapse readiness and response, while giving an occasional talk, course, or interview, and publishing articles.
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