Our Holy Hope: He has Conquered the World
A steadfast friend of mine said something profound to me on the phone last month. As we were reflecting on the anxiety and sin of our current times she said, “If it hurts our heart, just imagine how much more it hurts the heart of the Father.” This line has stuck with me since. In our state of the world right now it can be so easy to say, “Where is God?,” it can be easy to wonder “How can God work through THIS?” Surely, the work of the enemy seems to be surrounding us, but though I can easily compile a list of all the bad and seemingly scary things happening in our culture and our nation, I am reminded that Jesus never promised a perfect world.
Jesus told us there would be evil. He told us there would be suffering. He told us there would be persecution. He told us that we would endure great trials. He even told us that we would be hated for loving Him (Matthew 10:22). He told us this knowing that we would not be able to endure these things alone. Jesus knew we needed Him. If the world were perfect, He wouldn’t have had to come to restore and redeem us. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus famously says, “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Matthew 6:34). When I usually read this passage my attention focuses on the first part. But recently God turned my attention from “Do not worry about tomorrow” to “Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” Jesus acknowledges that we will face evil everyday. This is why Saint Paul says “Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).
We are living in a broken world. We are sinners, each one of us. So, why am I so surprised when I hear of the evil of our time? I suspect it’s because we know this is not how it was meant to be. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says,
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
We are unsettled by evil because inherently we know that we were made for more. Our conscience is from Christ, whether we know it or not. So, though the evil of our day can be consuming, we are not helplessly consumed. In Christ there is hope in our brokenness. He has not left us in desperation. He has given us Himself, the light of the world, and has defeated darkness.
Too often Christianity is portrayed as soft, composed of idealistic and unrealistic romantic ideas that just feed what we wish to be true. This is not the God we serve or the faith we practice. We are in a battle everyday. As children of God we have the responsibility to act, not to remain in our selfish comfort on the sidelines. Christianity is not a sheltering from evil, rather it exposes evil in the Father’s light. Even more, faith is more than just a cute word we paint on signs, it’s not wishful thinking, it's a reality. Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Saved in Hope writes,
Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.
Faith gives us hope, not an empty hope but a hope that endures. Jesus warned us of evil, but promised His hope. As He says in John 16:33, “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”
So, if you are struggling with the evil of our day, struggling to see His light in the darkness, remind your heart: Our God is not an absent God. He is Emmanuel, “God with us.” Remind your heart that He is not a cold and oblivious God. He is close and His heart aches for the trouble much more than we'll ever experience in this world. But we must also remind our heart that all the evil, suffering and trouble is not in vain. He has a plan far beyond what we can see and He always knows better than us. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity writes it perfectly:
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all...If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will—that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings—then we may take it is worth paying.
Next time we are inclined to argue with God or question His ability to work in a situation, we must remember that He is working all around us in ways we may never understand in this life. One day we will see the power and reach of His hand. One day we will see all the ways He worked around us. One day we will wonder how we could have ever questioned or doubted His providence. But for now, we must trust that He has a plan. Trust that His heart does not delight in evil. After all, we mustn't forget that Jesus was fully divine AND fully human. He knows the pain of the human heart and He knows first-hand the evils of the world, but He loves us so much He does not leave us there.
So with every hearing of evil or piece of bad news let us be inclined to not respond with “Why, Lord?” but rather with “You have conquered the world.” Whether it be the fear and anxiety of COVID-19, the anger at the lack of respect for life in our country, the suffering of financial trouble, the frustration with our cancel culture or the disheartenment over hypocrisy and gossip, we can look at all this evil in the face and say, “You have conquered the world.”
After all, the more evil exposed is just an opportunity for God’s light to be shone even brighter than before. I once had a professor tell me, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” So, I pray as Christians we have the courage to stand up and use our faith as a shield because the devil would want nothing more than for us to look at the world through the lens of fear than the lens of faith. Fear discourages, but faith emboldens.