Hope

Hope. It is a word that is hard to find these days. We use it so glibly when talking about things we want. We say, “I hope I get the new playstation for Christmas”, or “I hope that I can get this paper done on time.” But what does it truly mean to hope. What does it mean to continue to believe in something when the world seems to be against you. 

Hope is something I have been meditating and stewing on for the past couple months. I haven’t posted for about a month, and that is because I had lost hope. I began to question why am I even doing this? Why do I continue to put myself out there when the Church seems like it will never change? I have even been asked this by people I meet, or pastors I tell my story to. I often hear, “I can’t believe that you still even go to Church.” 

But if we look at Scripture, we see that hope is an integral part of the Christian journey. Without hope, Abraham wouldn’t have left his home and followed God; the Israelites wouldn’t have left Egypt. Without hope, the jewish people would have succumbed to the Roman Empire. Without hope the Church would be lost today. 

But why do I hope? What am I even hoping for? Why do I struggle against Church tradition and traditional teaching? Why should we hope? 

I do this because our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Since the beginning, God has given us hope. During the fall, God promised one who would come to make all things new (see Gen. 3:15). Since then, God had sent His prophets to tell the Jews that there is a time where their saviour would come. 

For me, my hope is not in the fact that one day the Church might (hopefully) change their theology of sexuality and gender to include the queer community. My hope is in the fact that Jesus will return and make all things new. I long for the day where I will be able to be a pastor in the denomination that I grew up in, but I hope and yearn for the day when Jesus will come back and creation will be restored in and through him. 

That is why as queer Christians, we must actively seek for a less damaging and damning theology from Churches, but we can’t put our hope in this change. Rather, we must return to our living hope—Christ. 

While I love the Church with my whole heart, it is not because of the people who think they are running it. Rather it is because it is the expression of the Kingdom of God here on earth. While Christ is the head of the Church, the people are the body, and this body is broken. This body is full of pride, greed and envy. We are so overcome with the delusion that we are in control, that we seek to make hard boundaries of who is in the community and who is out. As people, we can’t put our hope in the human run side of the Church, but we must put our hope in the head of the Church—Jesus. 

Only He can bring about the redemption of the world, and he is our hope. 

Our hope must be in Jesus.