Hope, Faith, and the Pursuit of Eternal Joy

Hope is one of the theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not, as some modern people think, a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we're to leave the present world as it is. [00:02:38]

If you read history, you will find the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought the most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great ones who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. [00:02:48]

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in so to speak. Aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. [00:03:24]

Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main direct objects, you start becoming a crank and imagine there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more: food, games, work, fun, open air. [00:03:36]

Most of us find it very difficult to want heaven at all, except insofar as heaven means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained. Our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. [00:04:08]

Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. [00:04:20]

We have these desires, these yearnings in us that we almost don't even recognize. We don't even know what they're for. For him, that was a pointer that yes, there is something not of this world that is meant to be our heart's desire, that we were created for. [00:05:20]

Christians who have made the most difference were the ones whose sights were not set completely on this world, that their eyes were set on heaven, their minds were set on heaven. We do think about it. I think it's easy to find fault with or poke holes in the kind of childish pictures of heaven. [00:07:10]

You can't get health if health is the main thing you want. You can't save civilization if your main goal is saving civilization. I've thought also about diversity and inclusivity. We talk about that a lot in these days. Somehow you can't get diversity if your main goal is diversity. [00:08:18]

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that hedonists classically thought that happiness was the great good and the thing that we all do strive for and should strive for. But it was very quickly pointed out that if you single-mindedly make your decisions so as to achieve the greatest happiness possible for yourself, you are very unlikely to achieve it. [00:09:20]

I think a better way of thinking about it is to drop the separate links of chain picture and substitute for something like concentric circles, circles within circles extending outward. What's important is at the center. The next most important things are in the next ring, so on and so forth. [00:13:45]

What it means is you can change things in the outer rings, the peripheral beliefs, without necessarily affecting things in the inner rings. The things you have at the core will be largely immune from change when you change your beliefs in the outer rings. [00:14:03]