This is Faith in Play #84: Hope, for November 2024.
Some years back I was frequenting a Lutheran web forum–one of my degrees is from a Lutheran Bible college, but I was one of a few non-Lutherans in that group–when a young ministry student raised a question: if Paul says that of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love, do they, the Lutherans, have it wrong with their emphasis on faith?
The answer came to me almost as soon as I had read the question: faith is how we enter; love is what we enter. The answer satisfied him, and no one else on the forum suggested anything different, and in the years since I’ve been satisfied that this is right.
However, it created a question: where does hope fit?
Over time I’ve come to realize that we have a completely wrong understanding of what faith is. I delve into this in my book Do You Trust Me? in which I demonstrate that faith is a way of knowing what you did not observe directly. You know that George Washington was the first President of the United States, that the earth circles the sun at a distance of eight light minutes, and that your paycheck is worth what it says, all by faith. It is the conviction of things not seen, as the author of Hebrews tells us. It is things that we know, with certainty, based on something other than empirical proof.
Our problem is that we think faith is believing things we don’t really know. We would say something like I believe I’m going to heaven but I don’t know it to be true, it’s only what I believe. That’s wrong twice. The first mistake is Jesus has told you that you are going to heaven, so you know it’s true, and this is an example of faith, because you were told by someone whose word is reliable and you thus know it as surely as you know Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States. You have been told by a reliable source. The second mistake is that if this really is something you think might be true but don’t know to be true, then that’s not faith, that’s hope. We have trouble understanding hope because we are confused about faith. Hope is something we can’t prove but want to be true and have some supporting evidence.
That gave me the missing piece: hope is why we enter.
Hope is often a source of motivation: we act to achieve that which we hope will be. On consideration it should be evident that this is what motivates many adventures–characters hope to find wealth and improve their skills, or to gain recognition for their prowess, or to become gainfully employed in the future. Sometimes the hopes are grander–to win the heart and hand of the fair maiden, or restore the heir to his rightful throne, or bring peace and safety to the land. Usually, though, it is hope.
Given this, it is evident that the referee can drive the game by enhancing the hopes. An ancient delving has been found, and the characters hope there might be something valuable within them. If there are rumors of such dungeons in the region, those hopes might be raised; further, if someone has an ancient map or other document suggesting that this was a place of some importance once, or a specific notion of what might have been hidden there, these give greater hopes, and so greater motivation.
As I have noted elsewhere, hope opposes fear. The higher the level of hope, the more highly motivated the characters are, and the more risk they are willing to take.
Hopes can be dashed. If this happens too often, or too severely, people can lose hope, refuse to believe that good will come, and so lose their motivation. Samuel Clemmons–Mark Twain–was often approached by inventors seeking investment in one idea or another, and he lost a lot of money on such projects. Thus finally he turned away a young man with a crazy idea because he did not trust that it would work, and so did not invest in Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. It is reasonable that hopes should fail sometimes, but if they are never realized they cease to have their value as motivation.
So give your characters hope.