How to Have a Confident Assurance about the Things You Hope For
Why do so many Grandmas & Grandpas have a smile on their faces & twinkles in their eyes, often even when our world seems immersed in chaos, whether in our lives, personally, or even across our world, globally?
I'll cut to the chase. That joy, joy, joy, joy comes from the love of Jesus way down in their hearts!
Read on to learn more about this.
A quick word about faith for those interested
The nature of ultimate reality, including the nature of primal origins, causes, meanings and such, by definition & in principle, reveals itself neither analytically like a math proof or empirically like a science project. It's more like a cumulative case that gets argued in a court room via a preponderance of the evidence, although not always beyond a reasonable doubt.
Because its subject matter is of vital interest & profound existential concern, it also has the characteristics of what may be called "practical reasoning under uncertainty." That means that the provisional conclusions that one may draw can unavoidably require of us a "living as if" response. Such responses can vary in their confidence levels, their degrees of tentativeness & un/certainty.
The major competing worldviews (some just can't compete, flawed as they are) have never been analytically or empirically proven because that's impossible, in principle. Neither, though, can theism --- broadly conceived as the world's great traditions, which do share some core beliefs while otherwise diverging --- be disproved. The time-honored cumulative case arguments in favor of theism are compelling & resilient, even in how they respond to the problems of suffering & evil, which yield to neither cursory dismissals nor facile explanations.
The Gospel of Jesus, out of all the theisms, in my view, is the most true, beautiful & good because Jesus revealed God to be Truth, Beauty & Goodness, Himself! Other faiths can get aspects of this correct in varying measures even as they otherwise fall short.
So, how does "practical reasoning under uncertainty" work? In our everyday life, MOST of our decisions and actions rely on this type of reasoning rather than absolute proof? What grounds those decisions & actions? We justify them mostly based on respect for authorities, who have proven trustworthy.
We don't KNOW whether, when we get to the top of the Mississippi River Bridge, there will be concrete spans missing or not. We TRUST and proceed with a confident assurance in what we HOPE to be the case.
We don't know whether, when we pop our daily maintenance meds, the capsules are cyanide-laced, at worst, or even just placebos. We TRUST and proceed with a confident assurance in what we HOPE to be the case.
And so on and thus and such regarding uncountable decisions & actions in our lives, both profound & mundane. We either justifiably rely on trustworthy authorities or live in paralyzing fear & unfruitful analysis.
As throughout our lives we increasingly experience for ourselves or witness in others major healings, restorations & transformations, our TRUST grows and we proceed with an ever-increasing confident assurance in what we HOPE to be the case.
It's why old people, our elders, who have witnessed profound evil & even personally experienced heart-wrenching tragedies across their personal lifespans, are often found at peace & smiling. With a faith-enlightened confidence, they dispense a simple wisdom & display a very deep trust. They seem to be saying: "All shall be well in the end. If things don't seem to be well, it's just not yet the end. When our fears ask ‘what if,?’ our faith will respond with ‘even if!’.”
The more we engage the marginalized, the more we'll encounter Christ. The more we practice a preferential option for the poor with radical love and make peace with our enemies with radical forgiveness, the more justified will be our own radical hope and the more we tap into that justifying gift of faith.
That gift of faith can never be earned precisely because it is a pure gift, just like our very existence. They are free gifts that God, alone, can give.
Why do we love Jesus?
Because he first loved us!
He, alone, has spoken the Word of eternal life; To Whom, else, shall we turn?
Who else can speak with such authority or lived in such a way to earn our complete trust?
You can TRUST in Jesus and proceed with an ever-increasing confident assurance in what you HOPE to be the case!
Taste & see the goodness of the Lord by practicing radical forgiveness & radical love with radical hope! Radical faith will follow those decisions & actions. He promised. And He is trustworthy!
Deeper questions for those interested
The questions regarding faith & ultimate reality involve grappling with the Big 3 questions of philosophy - what can we know? what can we hope for? and what must we do?
All I've ever come up with is that we can hope to know what we must do, which is to love all & forgive everything.
Those questions and concerns also involve our struggles with some of the most difficult questions of theology, paramount of which is how, if God is all knowing, all good & all powerful, there could be so much evil & suffering, as well as questions regarding how much bearing the decisions & acts of our earthly life could possibly have on the afterlife.
The best responses I've come across neither diminish God's knowledge, goodness & power nor the significance that this life has for the next. One thing all of those responses do have in common, though, is that they reject such notions as eternal conscious torment.
In my own response, which I call Restorationism, during our earthly sojourn --- as well as His own! --- Jesus empties --- emptied --- Himself of power to open up a space for our own freedom & autonomy. However, the purpose of this life is not for us to self-determine whether or not we will become God's friends. That is indeed how we begin our journey and, while we can & do go temporarily astray, God guarantees that we will all, somehow, end our earthly journey that way, too, for example via a post-mortem purgation.
What we are doing with our freedom & autonomy, then, uncoerced by God's omnipotence, is self-determining both how & how much we will love Him.
In other words, it's all about a growth in intimacy, where all SHALL become God's friends and all are INVITED to become God's lovers.
So, the choice before us isn't everlasting torment versus bliss but between abundance & superabundance.
How can we know God is real & not just some social construct?
Do everything Jesus said about the preferential option for the poor & marginalized and about forgiveness. You will discover that radical faith, like radical hope, is always justified and that neither are ever far away from radical love. That's a sure way to grow in divine intimacy.