The Loss of Hope in an Obama Era

by Lawrence Fox
Hope is the Theological Virtue of Expectation; an expectation rooted in a Promise. For the Christian, Hope is rooted in the Promises of Christ, such as the promises found within the Sermon on the Mount. Hope as a virtue is like a muscle, and the exercise for this muscle is fidelity to one's calling in life. Hope brings about the freedom from self. The opposite of Hope is despair which is rooted in self and self desecration and self destruction.
Despair (spiritual not chemical) is the opposite of Hope, and is the fruit of presumption and lack of fidelity. Lucifer exists in absolute despair...something to be grasped. A person of Hope gives of themselves. A person in despair demands things for themselves, like entitlement on steroids or like pundits who demand and call people bigots for seeing the wisdom and natural and created reality of male-female marriage for which there is the potential of real giving.
Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher) wrote a gifted essay titled: "Sickness unto Death." In this essay he describes hope and despair in relation with promise and fidelity. Pagan society (before Christianity) lived in a form of despair as evidenced by the practice of suicide so often clothed under a cultural virtue of dignity, and abhorrence for suffering.
But pagan society was searching for a promise.
With the Gospel and the promise of Redemption and Resurrection, the culture changed and Hope entered the vocabulary as a Theological Virtue. 400 years after the confusion stemming from the "Reformation" things have reversed. Society is in a worse state; now advocating for a culture of bareness, a promise of wealth without children, and commitments which cannot produce children naturally, and of course the promise of a safer planet which will be populated by people living in despair and demanding entitlement provided by the STATE which will be a tyrant run by leaders in greater despair.
Despair inflames fear which so often leads to violence. Violence let it be known is the modern cultural method for preventing and spacing the birth of children.
Sounds like HELL.