HOPE is a major theme of Advent, here in a cultural moment where perhaps it has never been in shorter supply. Last Sunday at Kessler Park, and in thousand of other Christian Churches, worshippers lit the first candle on the Advent Wreath…which is often designated as the “candle of hope.”

For those outside our tradition, we believe the season of preparation for Christmas started on that day. No, not on Consumerist Christmas start-date of Black Friday…or even the Fall Equinox (Sept 21…where you can often already find Christmas decorations up in some stores…).

For us, we count a four week period of preparation for Christmas.
And, like many of you, we tire of the endless ways Christmas is commodified by the culture.

Because the values of Advent are values we desperately need. And they are values that seemingly get lost in desperate search for shopping bargains.

HOPE. PEACE. JOY. LOVE.

The order is not as important as the values themselves.

But HOPE…the candle of HOPE feels to me to be the one that, in our cultural moment, is in the shortest supply.

Christian Hope is not naive optimism. Nor is it clinging to a belief in some future heaven. Christian Hope takes a hard look at every hard thing in our world…and still finds ways to put on foot in front of the other. It looks beyond the event-horizon of whatever is happening now, and is closely related to TRUST. It trusts that we CAN make a difference in our world, even when the evidence seems bleak. It trusts that God’s Christmas messages is that we must find reasons to Hope, reasons to not just crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and hide. Trust me, I want to do this too, sometimes.

But I my favorite verse on Hope and Faith calls back to me:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith/Hope is not just being confident in “facts,” or placing our confidence in evidence. Because the evidence we choose to see and believe can always shift.

For example, I once strongly held to the “Myth of Human Progress.” The Trump era swept away the final vestiges of this in me. I no longer believe in finding evidence for human progress in the events of this world. There is too much contrary suffering to point too…too many “steps back” to justify that naive view. Some of you will remember previous writing I have done to urge us all to abandon this dangerous myth. It’s dangerous precisely because it lulls us into a sense of complacency about the future. A sense that “everything is fixed…and we don’t have to worry or work toward a better future.”

Again, this myth is DANGEROUS.
But this does not mean I am without hope. I am VERY hopeful.

But, my hope comes from a spiritual center, not a physical or logical one. Again, my Hope comes from an event-horizon beyond what I can see. I do not assume a positive outcome for me personally, but have a bedrock trust that we must find ways for positive action, no matter how bleak things look.

This Fall, I found a social scientist whose new book has been deeply helpful to me, as I try to unpack Hope this Advent season. The book is “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness,” by Jamil Zaki.

Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford. I have now read his book twice, because I find it so compelling…..AND! So incredibly resonant with everything I believe about hope and human beings from my own Christian faith.

If you are looking for something to read about HOPE during this Advent season, I urge you to consider this book.

Zaki suggests what I also believe: That our culture prizes CYNICISM over Hope. (He is, himself, a self-described cynic…)

It is “cool” to be a cynic. It’s cool to dress in black, and make pithy comments about others. Hell, I do it too. We ALL do. Especially on the broad socio-political Left, it is “cool” to be cynical, and to slam hopefulness as naive.

But Zaki has tested people with a cynical mindset and found that, interestingly, they don’t do as well on some cognitive tests…in the very areas we all assume they are better at. Our culture assumes several things about cynics.

First, we assume cynics are SMARTER. But they are not. Here’s how Zaki described this to CNN:

“Cynicism gets treated as smart and socially savvy when it’s actually quite naive. People think, “Yeah, cynicism feels bad, but it’s the price of being right.” In fact, cynics often get things wrong. If you present people with a story about a cynic and a non-cynic, 70% will believe that the cynical person is smarter, and 85% will believe that person is better able to spot lying.”

Did you catch that? We ALL believe that a cynical attitude is a SMARTER attitude. But that doesn’t turn out to be true, when you study it, scientifically. Zaki continues:

“Neither belief is correct; cynics score less well than non-cynics on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem-solving and mathematical skill — and even being able to sniff out liars.”

We think cynics can “sniff out” liars better than us. But that turns out to be wrong. We assume cynics are smarter at problem solving…but that turns out to be wrong too.

We also assume cynicism is a SAFE choice. In dangerous times, cynicism, we believe, will keep us safe. But Zaki says science destroys this view too. He says this:

“Another misconception is that cynicism is safe. Some people respond to past hurts with what I call “pre-disappointment cynicism,” seeking to avoid feelings of betrayal or neglect by never counting on anyone.”

But here is what science finds is the cost of this mindset:

“This isolates us from connection, collaboration, friendship and love. The things that make life beautiful require us to embrace vulnerability and openness. Shrinking our lives to avoid trusting others is incredibly detrimental to our long-term mental, physical and social health.”

Again, as a preacher, I have been saying this same thing for months now. We are all…in our own ways…contracting our worlds. We are fleeing to our silos of Team Red and Team Blue, hiding behind our gated communities, buying guns…whatever…whatever YOU do to feel safe from the dangerous world.

But the paradox is, science shows us that this atrophies our ability to be healthy. Zaki and his colleagues can show how our physical and emotional health is HARMED by our efforts to keep ourselves and our lives “safe.”

By the way…this is also the powerful spiritual truth in Jesus’ “Parable of the Bigger Barns.” Hoarding our possessions, our resources —spiritual, mental, physical— actually shortens our lives!

(Jesus said this 2,000 years ago…modern science can confirm it in the lab…)

Fraught political times, global pandemics, have pushed us AWAY from actual human contact with each other. As Jonathan Haight also recently wrote, parents are guarding their children too…protecting them from “free play” in the real world. Haight credibly describes two culture moves that parents have done that have harmed kids:

1. In the 1990s, parents decided the world was too dangerous for outdoor play (It actually wasn’t…crime rates were lower than they’d been in decades…)
2. Then! In the 2000s, parents started replacing outdoor play with indoor SCREENS…tablets, laptops. (To be clear: *I* was one of those parents…)

These two moves mean we now have generations of young people who did not, or do not, socialize with other actual human children. They don’t play on the playground. Which means, they don’t fall down, scrape their knees, get up…and learn the resilience that comes from the games children play.

But…this is happening with ADULTS too. Voluntary groups —from bowling leagues to church softball leagues— have atrophied over the past twenty years. We just don’t SEE each other, in the real world, the way we used to.

This has implications for how we TRUST each other, and implications for our levels of of HOPE too. It’s something I’ve said many times lately: One of the best reasons to come to church is…just being with people….we all need that.

Can we get that other places? Sure. But too many of us don’t. As I’ve tried to say many times, there is a kind of Christian faith that pulls us to true community, and avoids pie in the sky naivite.

Zaki helpfully contrasts CYNICISM with SKEPTICISM. He says we ought to avoid the former, but embrace the latter.

CYNICISM is: a lack of faith and trust in people.
SKEPTICISM is: A questioning of our assumptions.

Again, I find this distinction very helpful.

As he defines cynicism, I read much of the spiritual concept of “Otherizing” that preach about so very often….that we human beings Otherize others…automatically distrust other “tribes” and social groups.

This is, as I read it, is Zaki’s cynical view. This does not mean we embrace everything everyone says. Skepticism is important. But cynicism destroys our trust in others, and tears apart the fabric of our society.

Now, I am sure that many of you are reading this and saying, “But, but, but…” You want to throw down a “whataboutism” concerning somebody who’s doing something truly horrible in our world. Don’t bother. We all understand just how bad things are. But the way out is not down…into more division and cynicism.

The way out is, somehow, finding a way to trust each other again. Zaki’s scientific findings about how we SEE the other “teams” are instructive. Zaki shows how we each think the other “team” is far more violence that surveys show we actually are. He finds that we consistently UNDER-estimate the goodness of ordinary people on the “other team.” (Not the leaders, but ordinary people….)

Zaki finds that Team Red looks across, cynically, at Team Blue, and Team Blue looks at Team Red, and BOTH assume levels of violence that are close to *double* the actual numbers!!

This, friends, is one of the most dangerous mistakes we are making today. But, the more we are skeptical of our OWN assumptions, the more we can find the path out of our divisions and lack of hope.

This, in my mind, calls back Malcom Gladwell’s “Talking To Strangers,” and everything he teaches us there about just how bad we are at “reading other people.” (Zaki can show this is true, scientifically….and how harmful it is…)

So, how to we embrace a skeptical mindset, and avoid a cynical one? Zaki’s book goes into some suggestion in the final section. Following his own advice, he looks squarely at some difficult societal problems and gives hopeful examples of how folks are working for positive change.

But the primary point I take away is: We have to be TOGETHER. We can’t do it behind our screens. (Yes, it’s a paradox for me to say this right now….)

Perhaps I should end this essay by coming back to Christian hope.

How would a Christian see hope, in the face of this horrible world we are in, right now?
How would a Christian find a path to positive skepticism, and avoid dangerous cynicism?

What leaps to my mind is a set of sayings that Mother Teresa kept on the wall of her office. They were actually penned by Dr. Kent Keith, and he called them “The Paradoxical Commandments.” But, clearly Mother Teresa saw in them what all of us Christians do: A pathway to hope that avoids cynicism even in the face of horrible evidence to the contrary.

So, let me end with the Paradoxical Commandments. Because I see them as a fantastic example of Christian Hope. Spirtuality SHOULD help us get at the paradoxes of life…not just push us to fantasies about a world to come, or cynicism about the world that is.

In this Advent Season, as you look for Hope, consider the power of the “Paradoxical Commandments” as a pathway there:

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies,
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you,
Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight,
Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous,
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten,
Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough,
Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.”