Angel Words and the Search for Optimism

We drew angel words on the way out of church last Sunday. Without looking, each of us drew a single word to guide us in the coming year. Funny how it works, everyone seemed to get a word that met their needs. For instance, a young single mother recently laid off from her job received the word “support.” A blind draw, but a perfect match -- you might want to call it a “God thing.”

My word was “contentment.” Strangely enough, I was already telling myself I needed to work on finding more contentment. My recent columns have been confrontational if not pessimistic. Although I prefer to think of them as calls to action, some might picture me as cynical about the state of the world. “Next time you sit down to write,” I told myself, “write something intentionally optimistic.” And then I drew the word contentment. That seals it, I thought, let’s bang out something upbeat about this old world of ours.

So I started racking my mind for an optimistic perspective. Well, we have the new president coming in. Everyone seems real hopeful he’ll turn things around. The news media is pumping up the atmospherics, making comparisons to the Kennedy era with the young children in the White House and all. Smiles all around. Nice pictures. Happy Days. You almost expect to spot Richie and Fonzy rounding the corner. But as soon as those pictures roll off the screen, here comes footage of the Gaza invasion, or more on how Bernie Madoff made off with everyone’s money, or worse yet, our general financial collapse, or housing collapse, or manufacturing collapse and jobs collapse. The only healthy sector of the economy is medical care, and how are we supposed to feel good about having a lot of sick people?

But let’s not give up so easily. There has to be some news to encourage me. We did have a good turnout in church the other day -- I liked that. And those angel cards gave me faith there’s some order to the universe. At the very least, our pastors were taking a concrete step to keep everyone focused. In times like these it’s easy to get disoriented and run around helter-skelter. It wasn’t easy but I managed to come up with a few items that make me hopeful for the future. Here’s my list:

> Disappointment breeds citizen activism. With politics and economics both in disarray, fewer people are willing to sit by as usual and trust our leaders and systems to serve our interests. We should have been taking personal responsibility all along, but better late than never. A popular Democrat in the White House makes no different. We all need to keep standing up on issues of war and peace and economic justice. If we don’t demand it, we won’t get it.

> Worldwide conflicts down in last decade. It might seem hard to believe with all the news of the past eight years, but war historians say that armed conflicts worldwide began trending down in 1989 and continued down through the 1990s. Levels reached their lowest rate since the 1950s. Many long-running wars, including those in Latin America, finally came to an end. Some doubt we can maintain the trend. Maybe they’re right. Let’s hope not.

> Speaking the Truth. In Philip Jenkins’ article Recovering Church History, Christianity Today reported that the Iraq War has decimated Iraq’s Christian church and population. It seems Christians were prominent in Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, preferring it because it was avowedly secular. Now, in a nation dominated by Muslim-aligned parties, Christians have found themselves “cleansed” or have been forced to flee the country. Why is this a cause for optimism? Well, Christianity Today is a conservative publication telling a story that has been suppressed by the media in general. Truth is the beginning of healing. Hats off to Christianity Today.

> The recovery package. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman keeps raising the ante. He now says our economic conditions are looking more and more like the beginning of the Great Depression. That may not sound like positive news, but it may take a total emergency to get our leaders to act quickly and decisively in the short term. Many are still refusing to admit the facts of what went wrong because that would argue for permanent changes to patterns of self-interest that caused the crisis.

Well I did my best. Finding causes for optimism is hard these days, but here’s the bottom line: as Christians we’re not allowed to be cynical or to lose hope. We can be honest and we can stand up forcefully for change, but faith requires that we are always hopeful God’s will for the world will prevail. We are called not to despair, but to believe it can happen, and then to go out and see that it does.