"Hope - of the right kind - is an essential trait and quality for the disciples who proceed forward on the `straight and narrow path' notwithstanding their weaknesses," wrote Elder Neal A. Maxwell in Notwithstanding My Weakness.
"Real hope, said Paul, is a hope for things that are not seen that are true. (See Rom. 8:24.) Paul accurately linked hopelessness and godlessness as he wrote of those having no hope, and without God in the world.' (Eph. 2:12.) Christ-centered hope, however, is a very specific and particularized hope. It is focused on the great realities of the resurrection, eternal life, a better world, and Christ's triumphant second coming. . . ."Moroni asked rhetorically,What should we hope for?' and, responding, said: `Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.' (Moroni 7:41.)
"Paul described the resurrection-orientation of our hope with equal explicitness: `But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.' " (1 Thes. 4:13-14.)
Elder Maxwell pointed out that gospel hope is a very focused and particularized hope that is based upon justified expectations. "It is a virtue that is intertwined with faith and charity, which virtues are not to be understood either when they are torn apart from each other or apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, without whom they are all vague virtues," Elder Maxwell wrote. "Doubt and despair go together, whereas faith and hope are constant companions. Those, for instance, who hope' in vain for (and speak of) the day of world peace when menshall beat their swords into plowshares' ignore the reality that the millennial dawn will be ushered in only by the second coming of Jesus Christ. Neither secular rhetoric nor secular assemblies will succeed in bringing lasting peace to this planet. Secularists, meanwhile, have ironically appropriated the Lord's language of hope while denying Him! It is He and His ways alone that can bring about such desirable conditions. There will be no millennium without the Master.
"Paul's futuring focused on the Lord, giving us consolation by holding forth that which is to come, confirming hope. But this hope develops, as does faith, `line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little, and there a little.' (D&C 128:21.)
"It is to be understood, however, that hope is not the same as perfect knowledge. (See Alma 32:21.) Once we have actually seen, said Paul, it is not hope.' (Rom. 8:24.) Thus hope, like faith, is not quite knowledge. Yet, being at the border of knowledge, we can see throughglass darkly' enough of the future to affect how we live today.
"Indeed, one of the virtues necessary for us to remain on the straight and narrow path, said Nephi, is a `perfect brightness of hope.' " (2 Ne. 31:20.)
Elder Maxwell wrote further: "Even our righteous experience brings hope: `And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.' (Rom. 5:3-4.)
"Quite clearly, therefore, ultimate hope is tied to the verifiable expectation of a resurrection and the better world to follow. Paul observed that if our hope in Christ pertained to this life only,' a resurrectionless view of Christ, we would beof all men most miserable.' (1 Cor. 15:19.) In other words, proximate hope, disengaged from the reality of the resurrection (what some inconsistently espouse as a Christian existentialism), is not Christian hope at all!"
