I'm Embracing a Theology of Hopelessness and I Think You Should, Too.

This goes without saying, but this year has certainly been one for the books. While we’ve all been affected differently by all the things this year has brought, most of us, regardless of where we are, still feel the collective exhaustion. I know I do—it’s depleting, overwhelming. If you read my post when COVID first hit, you’ll know that I was avoiding silver linings earlier this year, resisting the “well, at least…” of the privileged in effort to remain tender, to learn to lament well.

It was good and necessary for me to do so then and to continue to do so now as the news cycle keep churning, as injustices continue to happen across the globe. And don’t worry, I have also intentionally sought things to be thankful for, small wins to rejoice over in this season. I think that’s important and should be part of our daily living, our spiritual disciplines and connection to the Divine and others. Like everything else on this journey of spiritual wholeness, I think there must be a balance. There are seasons of lament and seasons of joy, times of gratitude and times of sorrow, moments of struggle and moments of rest.

However, it’s still true that in uncertain and overwhelming times like these, the word “hope” continues to be thrown around in an attempt to soothe our pangs of anxiety and unease. But with November coming and thousands of people still dying, still without jobs, I’ve persisted in my wrestling with the detrimental effects of platitudes.

I’ve continued to wonder if pushing the notion of hope is any more helpful now than it was earlier this year, particularly for those of us who hold privileges that shield us from inhumane laws or the consequences thereof.

This wrestling has led me to actively and intentionally seek out a theology that seems a lot closer to the narratives of those in Scripture, and the marginalized and minoritized in our midst. How do we engage with desperate people and desperate situations? How do we develop a theology that takes seriously the lives of those who feel hopeless—those whose humanity is defined by struggle, and struggle only?

Searching for an answer to these questions has led me to embrace something that makes many privileged Christians uncomfortable. It has led me to embrace a theology of hopelessness—one that I believe is more “biblical” (whatever that means) than a theology centered on a superficial notion of hope—and I think you should embrace it, too.

In his book, Embracing Hopelessness, Miguel De La Torre argues that “hopelessness frees us to imagine creative ways to struggle for justice.”

Oftentimes, when people are hopeless, forced into desperation, they will do whatever it takes to liberate themselves from their current situation. When threats of a loss of political freedom plagued my abuelo in Cuba, desperation led him and seven others to board a small lancha in the middle of the night with hopes of arriving to the Miami shore. Hopelessness embraces the current reality and for many, it can enact courage, serving as an impulse for perseverance.

Many narratives in Scripture highlight the notion of desperation, how hopelessness leads to seemingly “questionable” acts in which the marginalized not only do courageous things, but they do so in ways that might make modern day Christians feel uneasy. This can be seen in the ways that characters in the Bible act as “tricksters” who struggle for their own liberation and the liberation of their people by essentially “messing with” the systems of power.

One such character is that of Tamar in Genesis 38 who is left without children after two of her husbands die. Her father-in-law, Judah (who was the father of her first two husbands) was supposed to, by law, marry her to his youngest son. However, seeing what happened to his first two sons, he decides to lie to Tamar and abandon her, leaving her destitute without husbands or sons to secure her future.

Due to her desperate situation, Tamar enacts her survival by dressing up as a prostitute in order to trick her father-in-law into sleeping with her. Her plan works when he impregnates her, securing her future in the family. This act of trickery leads Judah to declare that Tamar “is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah,” he says.

Tamar’s initial hopelessness and desperation enables her to engage in this act of trickery which not only awards her the title of “righteous,” but gains her a place in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1, as her son Perez becomes the ancestor of King David and thus the ancestor of Jesus.

While narratives like these might be shocking for the dominant culture—from Esther hiding her identity from the king of Persia, to Jacob cheating his way to an inheritance—engaging in deceit in order to ensure their own liberation or the liberation of an entire people is commonplace in Scripture. In each of these instances, whether it be trickery, lying, or deceit, God blesses the outcome, proving that God is always and consistently on the side of the oppressed.

For many marginalized people across history, hopelessness has been the catalyst for change, as moments of desperation force many to use their voice and enact their own agency, particularly when the power structures at hand are designed to domesticate them and keep them silent.

Of course, my wish isn’t to romanticize hopelessness, but simply acknowledge the reality of desperation, and how our embracing hopelessness might allow us to stand in solidarity with those struggling for their, for our liberation. As De La Torre says, “We embrace hopelessness when we embrace the sufferers of the world, and in embracing them, we discover our own humanity and salvation, providing impetus to our praxis, for hopelessness is the precursor to resistance and revolution.”