Hope
When you’re a Christian, this thing happens where new, unexpected things remind you of the hope you have in Jesus. For me, as an avid lover of pop culture, it’s often on a screen that these reminders hit me. They hit me whilst watching Moana walk across the water to tell Te’Fiti that she sees her true spirit. They hit me as I read the Narnia books. They hit me as I watch Queer Eye and see people from different worlds embrace.
All this considered, the specific show and reminder that makes me the most grateful, is philosophical comedy, The Good Place. For those who haven’t watched it, the show centres around 4 individuals who are sent to this world’s version of Heaven: The Good Place. The philosophy that determines your place in the afterlife is simple – in your life, every action you make is accredited a point value based on its moral leanings. Positive moral actions get you positive points, whereas every negative actions gets you minus points. The reason this show makes me grateful for the hope I have in Jesus, the hope that specifically culminates at Easter on the Cross, is that I am so unbelievably grateful that my salvation is not determined on the value of every action I make. If it were, I am so painfully aware that I would be heading to The Bad Place.
Lockdown has revealed a lot of different things to different people, but for me, I have found that it has, more than anything, made me even more aware of my own sinfulness. I see it in my attitude to work. I see it in the way I treat my housemates. I see it in the way I’ve used my time over the last year. We all like to think that we are good people, but as The Good Place reminds us, and as I have seen way too clearly during lockdown, the reality is that our hearts so often lean towards the opposite.
Awareness of sin is terrifying, and can even become consuming. In fact, I found this as a teenager, where guilt from feeling like I was letting God down, sent me into a bout of depression. There’s a reason the phrase ‘Catholic Guilt’ is a common one: awareness of one’s own sinful heart leaves us feeling guilty, overwhelmed, and that we are overall terrible people.
However, this is where the hope of Easter comes in. This is why this event and this weekend that is celebrated by Christians every year is such a pinnacle of the faith. It’s because Easter is the reason that we don’t have to wallow in awareness of our own sin, because Easter gives us the solution to it, and reminds us that solution has already been actioned by Jesus himself.
Every single stage of the Easter story provides fresh hope that eclipses my own mistakes. On Maundy Thursday, we see Jesus betrayed by a close friend, reminding us that humans have always got it wrong, and us messing up is not some oddity. On the same night, we also see the humanity of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prays to God to take this destiny away from him, and pleading for there to be another way. Jesus isn’t distant and unfeeling, but understands pain and despair and desperation. On Good Friday, we see a sinless man on the cross, taking the place of those who deserved it far more. We see someone who knows all the terrible things humanity has done, and all the terrible things it will continue to do, and yet chooses to take this upon himself and die anyway. On Easter Saturday, we are reminded that hope requires waiting, and at times, we won’t be able to see the next steps clearly. And then we arrive at Easter Sunday, the most glorious day of the Christian calendar, where Jesus beat death and rose again, so that those who love him may also know new life in him.
It’s an incredible and incredulous story, in which the hero of the narrative dies a gruesome death, but his personal sacrifice is far from horrific; it’s a wonderful picture of love. I implore you to give it a read, and to really think about why it’s a beacon of hope.
I am grateful each and every day that as a Christian, my salvation was secured for me on the Cross at Easter, and not by my own actions. I would, and do, fail tremendously, but the heart of the Easter story is that our failings have been conquered by the victorious one, who loves us endlessly, and would even die for us.