He is our father in the presence of God whom he believed—the God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. Against hope Abraham believed in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations according to the pronouncement, “so will your descendants be.”
To hope against hope. This is a beautiful, mystifying statement. “The God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do”. What kind of God could this be? Who could do such a thing? How could this transformation function? This is all connected to the God who makes the impossible possible and a connection to hope. How does this dynamic of impossible/possible work in our lives?
Kierkegaard defines hope as “the expectant relation to the possible good”. Through reading about differance and deconstruction in Jacques Derrida I would expand that definition of hope to “the expectant relation to and vision for the impossible/possible good”. This is a hope for the unpredictable and unimaginable good that could break into our lives at any moment. It’s the messianic hope. Without vision (or preparation) for this impossible good you may not even see it.
There are many films that show this surprise of the impossible. One excellent example is found in E.T. when the children discover the unimaginable in the reality of their encounter with the lovable (and messianic!) alien. At first they experience absolute shock and disbelief. As they accept this impossible their lives are enriched and transformed. It’s clear that none of them will ever be the same. The Advent/Event of the Impossible will have shaped them for the rest of their lives. This happens in our own being when we fall in love, have a spiritual depth experience or transcend through art. But always remember that this impossible is Event and therefore unpredictable and unexpected. This is hope for the impossible.
John D. Caputo writes about this trauma of the unexpected in beautiful ways.
If we have not adequately prepared ourselves in advance for the shock of alterity, the alter, instead of shocking us, will just pass us by without a ripple. What Derrida shows then is that the ‘tout autre’ (wholly other) comes but it comes relative to a horizon of expectation which it shocks and sets back on its heels, instead of confirming and reinforcing this horizon in its complacency.
So you may miss the impossible if you aren’t prepared for it and yet you can’t prepare for it in such a way that you can “make it happen”. The best you can do is be hopeful and open towards it.
In the life of predictability and cultural super-ego you will not have vision for this impossible good. You will sleep-walk through life in reality television, economic worries, racial/gender stereotyping and judging others in relation to societal standards. There is a reason why our cultures have an obsession with zombies right now. This is the underlying ideological reality that we already are the walking dead in our blind, slavish obedience to cultural norms and expectations.
The illusion that life is predictable is the result of the adaptive capabilities of the mind which deceives us into thinking that this life is “normal”, dull and necessary. So whether the impossible breaks into my life today or not the shock of life and the unpredictability is just as real. Perhaps spirituality is just the full openness and awareness of this state of awe, wonder and impossible.
Paul references making the dead alive. How could one hope in the midst of death? This reminds me of the contemplative mysticism of Thomas Merton. In this idea the only way to find any kind of genuine spiritual life is in the encounter with void. This void is the place of lack, the place of destitution. In this state of loss all religious and identity certainties are broken down. In the experience of the absence of God (existential atheism) you get to a deeper reality of spiritual truth. This is not enlightenment. This is what Jesus refers to when he says that he who wants to gain his life must lose it. This is the loss of identity through cultural, sexual, gender, political or religious grounds. All of your identities are laid waste in that void.
Looking at prayer and meditation (contemplation) in this way makes prayer itself seem to be deconstruction. Instead of translating/interpreting texts one allows oneself to be deconstructed, cut, wounded and translated in a new way. There is a sense of the impossible here because when practicing deconstruction you are opening yourself to the unimaginable. Who could you be if you saw yourself in a brand new way? There is no way to predict the answer to that question.
This unpredictability is the same cause of societies rejection of the impossible. The impossible, like Kierkegaard’s look at the call of God towards Abraham, is a dangerous call! And yet this promise of the unforeseeable calls to us, beckons us, inspires passion in us. Listen to the words of Jacques Derrida on this issue:
I am careful to say ‘let it come’ because if the other is precisely what is not invented, the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can consist only in opening, in uncloseting, destabilizing foreclusionary structures so as to allow for the passage toward the other. But one does not make the other come, one lets it come by preparing for its coming.
Christian hope is essential to Kierkegaard and he comes back to it all the time. It is very easy to read this in a Derridean sense as hope in the impossible. Of course, it seems that Derrida himself gets this language from Kierkegaard. This hope for/in the impossible, however, is not rooted in a certain or fixed outcome. The Christian hope does not end with physical death. This kind of hope is eternal in its longing for the impossible/possible good. In this sense hope can never die or run out. Therefore, physical death doesn’t stop it. What is beyond death? Who could say? But the Christian hopes even in the impossible; that there is an impossible good even beyond death. Kierkegaard says it this way:
…to hope is composed of the eternal and the temporal, and this is why the expression for hope’s task in the form of eternity is to hope all things, and in the form of temporality to hope always.
Kierkegaard continues to devastate my common sense beliefs about faith, hope and love. All three words have been broken down and re-built through the depth of insight and sensitivity of Kierkegaard’s writings. And now I am left with the continual evolution of these three mighty words:
Faith: The life-definining commitment in response to Event/Call where active love is lived right now in the world.
Hope: Expectation of, or vision for, the impossible/possible good that can break into life at any moment.
Love: Gift; the open, unbounded, active, eager seeking of the good of the other.
As I go in writings and prayer I continue in dialectic between the possibility of hope for an afterlife and atheism. In either case the Call through Jesus is towards active faith, hope and love lived out right now in my specific culture and time. To hope is to believe in the possible good and that includes a possible afterlife. However, we must remember at all times what hope is. Hope is not certain knowledge. The Call is towards love right now. Love God (Source), the neighbor and the self. This is why Paul says later that the greatest of these is love; regardless of reward or nothingness after death. Love the neighbor.
