‘If only for this life, we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.’ (1 Corinthians 15:19)
During the last century, hope-like the ozone layer-began disappearing with alarming rapidity. The modern world had embraced the doctrine of inevitable progress. Mankind was sufficiently clever to so arrange his environment, as to ensure a better world. Humanity was on an unstoppable march to Utopia.
Few people think that now. We have entered the era of post-modernism. God has been sacked. We no longer need him. He became for us, and unnecessary hypothesis. But with God gone, life has been leached of hope. Once it was taken for granted, that when it came to fortifying individuals for the hard knocks, religion had the answers. Religion was a source of meaning-therefore, of hope.
In a universe without God, other elements... of reality---loom larger....pain, sorrow, and death take his place, as absolutes. Diane Ackerman, a telephone crisis counselor, in New York state, has written a book about her work entitled, " A Slender Thread." She is more aware than most, that in every city street, people are overwhelmed by life. They find it too difficult, too harsh, too painful, too sad.
Callers are loaded down with guilt; tons of self-reproach. Their nerves are frayed by worry. Some experience waves of uncontrollable anger. Some are are abused and battered; some depressed and lonely. In an average city, 12.4 persons per one hundred thousand kill themselves. Given that God, the ground of all hope, has been dismissed, it is a wonder that more do not commit suicide. Jean Paul Sartre posed that question to himself: "Why don't I commit suicide?"
The meaning of human beings is that they should 'love God and enjoy him for ever.' Only so, do they live in hope.