“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing. … It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”
—a person on X called Matthew (@CrowsFault)
Hope is a tricky thing. It can masquerade as a facile, feel-good sentiment, or it can pack the punch of a hard-fought attitude.
Although we often grasp at the sentiment, that version of hope frequently disappoints. But the hope that draws from attitude? That kind of hope is the real deal.
As someone who has spent a couple decades working to expose clergy sex abuse and cover-ups in a powerful, mega-monied, recalcitrant institution — the Southern Baptist Convention — there are plenty of days when hope seems elusive.
Christa Brown
People often ask me how I can possibly hold to hope, and it’s a good question.
When you hear story after story of pastors who rape and molest kids and congregants, of church leaders who turn a blind eye and bully survivors, and of endless ruses and maneuvers by denominational officials, the valley of the shadow of death feels near. And no amount of any gossamer sentimental hope can mitigate the horror.
Justice does not flow down like waters. And all platitudes are puny.
With money, might and institutional inertia stacked against us, clergy sex abuse survivors face overwhelming odds. This is the context in which I most struggle with holding hope, but of course, there are many more contexts in which hope feels slippery: democracy in peril, the rise of authoritarianism, structural racism and the regularity of mass shootings — to name just a few.
Systemic entrenched oppression stares us in the face.
But this much I know for sure: Hope never lies in forgetting, minimizing, whitewashing or pretending.
Rather, hope resides in seeing the reality of what is before us and telling the truth about it. The whole truth. The hard truth. The ugly truth.
Seeing reality and speaking the truth can sometimes feel bleak. Yet, paradoxically, this also can be the very foundation for hope.
“Both individually and institutionally, almost all transformations begin with truth-telling, first to ourselves and then to others.”
Both individually and institutionally, almost all transformations begin with truth-telling, first to ourselves and then to others. Truth-telling is an essential catalyst for change.
Truth-telling is also an act of courage.
By embracing reality, even in all its awfulness, we open the door to imagining what could be. And with that door ajar, we are able to glimpse other possibilities — possibilities that may seem impossible in the immediacy of the now but whose very imagining propels us to action.
And action holds the real-deal kind of hope.
For so many of us, raised in authoritarian religious groups, we were supposed to be silent, obedient, submissive, invisible. Yet, when we lift our voices, we rise defiant.
Our stories are inherently resurrection stories. By their very nature, they carry the hope of new life.
In oppressive systems marinated in lies and manipulations, speaking the truth becomes an act of resistance. And when we tell the truth about one painful thing, it can embolden us to tell the truth about other difficult things. Strength grows.
It grows within ourselves as individuals, and it grows collectively, within our society.
Whenever one person speaks aloud in defiance of an unjust status quo — and keeps speaking — it gives hope to others that they too can speak out. This gives rise to more voices, all speaking the truth, until eventually there’s a chorus.
The work is often slow, generations in the making. For many of us, we may never see the fruit of the justice we yearn for. But we plant the seeds anyway in the hope for an orchard in a future that lies beyond us.
“When we tell the truth about one painful thing, it can embolden us to tell the truth about other difficult things.”
Rather than resigning ourselves to the way things are, we take action toward building a better world, if not for ourselves, then for others. The good of what we do does not derive from the perceived results, because our actions are not mere tactics; rather, our actions are indicators of who we are as human beings.
What we do matters, even if we never know the precise how and when of its mattering, and even if, in our lifetimes, we never see the “success” of the change we seek.
By taking action, we reject passivity, and that alone is a hopeful thing in the here and now. By taking action, we exercise our own agency and engage a healthy resistance to the power of oppressive systems.
And resistance against oppressive forces is energy in the universe that is never wasted.
Even when injustice persists, by our actions, we refuse complicity with it. Others see that refusal and, realizing they aren’t alone, they too find ways to resist. Hope spreads.
Even when evil and its complicit enablers hold power, by our actions, we give evidence that evil does not wholly prevail. Hope shines in the dark.
Even when oppression is not ousted, by our actions, we affirm human dignity. And whenever human dignity is affirmed, hope grows.
Thus, action fosters hope in the present, and hope fuels action for the future. Together, they pull each other forward.
With our actions, big and small, we join hands in solidarity with others — past, present and future — who work for a better world. And in those intergenerationally linked hands, we find the shared bonds of a caring humanity.
In those shared bonds, hope abounds.
Christa Brown, a retired appellate attorney, is the author of This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and his Gang and a forthcoming memoir, due out in May 2024, called Baptistland. Follow her on Twitter @ChristaBrown777.
Related articles:
Truth Decay: How truthfulness is related to humility | Opinion by David Gushee
Pastors, speak your truth while you still have time | Opinion by Jakob Topper
In biblical truth-telling, we need to mind the gap between clergy and laity | Opinion by Mark Wingfield