 Hope, Artist: Donatello, Date: 1427-29  Hope, Artist: Agostino Cornacchini,
Date: 1725-26
(larger image)Directed toward God - 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
-Acts 24:15 - 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
-1 Peter 1:21 Directed toward Christ Objects of Hope - eternal life -
2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
-Titus 1:2, 3:7 - salvation -
8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.
-1 Thes 5:8 - righteousness -
5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.
-Gal 5:5 - glory of God -
2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
-Rom 5:2 Share your faith 1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." 9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. (Acts 1:1-9) Hope is opposed to the sins of despair and presumption; refraining from them is adhering to the negative precept of hope. The positive precept is required when exercising some duties, as in prayer penance. Some forms of Quietism have denied that a human being should desire anything whatsoever to such an extent that they denied that hope was a virtue. Hope is also the driving factor in human emotion that lets what some might view as impossible human action to be accomplished. Beyond the basic definition, usage of the term hope follows some basic patterns which distinguish its usage from related terms: - Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude. But hope and optimism both can be based in unrealistic belief, or fantasy.
- When used in a religious context, hope carries a connotation of being aware of spiritual truth; see Hope (virtue).
- Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism.
- The term false hope refers to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.
- Examples of hopes include hoping to get rich, hoping for someone to be cured of a disease, hoping to be done with a term paper, or hoping that a person has reciprocal feelings of love.
Hope was personified in Greek mythology as Elpis. When Pandora opened Pandora's Box, she let out all the evils except one: hope. Apparently, the Greeks considered hope to be as dangerous as all the world's evils. But without hope to accompany all their troubles, humanity was filled with despair. It was a great relief when Pandora revisited her box and let out hope as well. It may be worthy to note that in the story, hope is represented as weakly leaving the box but is in effect far more potent than any of the major evils. In some faiths and religions of the world, hope plays a very important role. Buddhists and Muslims for instance, believe strongly in the concepts of free will and hope. Hope is passive in the sense of a wish or a prayer - or active as a plan or idea, often against popular belief, with persistent, personal action to execute the plan or prove the idea. Consider a prisoner of war who never gives up hope for escape and, against the odds, plans and accomplishes this. By contrast, consider another prisoner who simply wishes or prays for freedom, or another who gives up all hope of freedom. In Human, All Too Human, existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had this to say about hope: Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods' gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the "lucky jar." Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good--it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment. Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism (1990) strongly criticizes the role of churches in the promotion of the idea that the individual has little chance or hope of affecting his or her life. He acknowledges that the social and cultural conditions, such as serfdom and the caste system weighed heavily against the freedom of individuals to change the social circumstances of their lives. Almost as if to avoid the criticism, in his book What You Can Change and What You Can't, he is careful to outline the extent that people can hold out hope for personal action to change some of the things that affect their lives. More recently, psychologist Anthony Scioli (2006) has developed an integrative theory of hope that consists of four elements: attachment, mastery, survival, and spirituality. This approach incorporates contributions from psychology, anthropology, philosophy and theology as well as classical and contemporary literature and the arts. There is some evidence to suggest that in adverse situations, hope may be worse than hopelessness for overall well-being. For example, people sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole adjust better to their situation than prisoners who retain the possibility of parole. Similarly, patients who underwent a permanent colostomy showed higher life satisfaction 6 months after the operation than those who underwent a potentially reversible colostomy. References - Scioli, A. (2006). Hope and Spirituality in the Age of Anxiety. In R. Estes (Ed.),Advancing Quality of Life in a Turbulent World. New York: Springer.
- Krakovsky, Marina. "Hope Can Be Worse Than Hopelessness", The New York Times, 2007-12-09. Retrieved on 2007-12-31.
- Powell, Lee. CedarCreek.tv, Against All Odds series, March 2/3, 2008.
- The Christian Museum (Keresztény Múzeum), Esztergom Hungary Retrieved 8/26/2009
- (Hope, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved 8/26/2009 2. ^ Previously called charity; however, in modern English charity commonly means giving alms to the poor and needy, so the word love is more accurate.
- Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for 'faith hope love' in the ESV". Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2009. 26 Aug 2009.
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