Life expectancy in the United States dropped last year, and not from disease, war, or natural disasters, but due primarily to increases in both suicides and drug overdose deaths. The statistics can be read in this article:
Fortune: Here's Why Life Expectancy in the U.S. Dropped Again This Year The associate professor who co-authored the report for the CDC, Steven Woolf, said "We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair." On average, 115 people die in America each day from a drug overdose, six per day from alcohol abuse, and the suicide rate has increased 24% between 1999 and 2014. As a nation, we are losing young people at an alarming rate from causes whose root is despair/hopelessness.
There are public policy answers that might help stem the tide, there are things that can be done in the arena of public health to mitigate the worst aspects of this crisis and save lives, but these are not solutions to the question of why so many people in America are hopeless. Our ancestors had less food, less comfortable and secure shelter and clothing, more fear of lawlessness and violent deaths, lived in a less free society with more injustice, worked longer and harder, were more subject to sudden death by disease, lost more of their children to scourges we have cured, had less education, less recreation, and less opportunity to change their lives for the better. And yet it is here in modernity, with our unparalleled access to recreation and entertainment that despair and hopelessness have taken hold. Material prosperity is not alleviating emotional poverty, why?
The element that will typically be left unaddressed in the debate that will follow this alarming report is spiritual health. Hope is not solely a factor of economic or political situations, well off people in free societies (i.e. America) do not automatically have it, and those living in crushing poverty under repressive regimes do not automatically lack it. Hope is a quality that mankind can possess, which all other forms of life on this planet are unconcerned with. Hope is a difficult to define state of mind, but one we recognize when it is present or missing. Hope is built upon things greater than ourselves, it thrives in community and wilts in isolation, and it hinges upon our expectations of the future.
We are less connected to our community than our ancestors, that much is certain. We may see far more people in a given day than they could have dreamed of, but we interact on a genuine human level with few of them, and our technology has consistently striven to eliminate the need for true human to human interaction. This is a part of the problem, but not its root, for that we must go deeper.
When Job lost nearly everything of value in his life: his business, his children, and his health, his wife despaired; who can blame a mother for doing so after enduring such pain? Job chose not to despair, not because he was a unique human being, but because he understood something fundamental about human existence: it belongs to God. Job responded to his wife by saying, "
Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10) Later, in response to his friends' attempts to understand his tragedy, Job said, "
Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15). Job did not understand why he had suffered, he didn't see a purpose or a reason for it, but he did not give in to despair, he did not rage at God or take his own life, because even at the lowest point imaginable in his life he still knew who his Creator was, knew that God's love transcended the circumstances of life, and knew that one day he would stand before God in judgment. Even when life told him otherwise, Job had hope because he was adamant in his belief in the goodness of God.
Hope is not our own creation, we cannot socially engineer it, we cannot package and sell it, it is a gift from God, a gift for those
in relationship with the one who created them, sustains them, and will one day live with them. As a runner, I can't help but like Isaiah 40:31
Isaiah 40:31 New International Version
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
To live without hope is to live as a shell of what you were intended to be. The Church of Jesus Christ is the caretaker of the hope that was given to humanity in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When he ascended into heaven, having completed the Father's mission by securing the ultimate victory over sin and death, Jesus entrusted the sharing of that Good News (i.e. The Gospel) to his followers. Since that day, nearly 2,000 years ago, the Church has attempted to share the news that God is willing to forgive those who repent, is willing to save them from the fallen state of humanity if they believe in his Son, and is willing to transform them, by the Holy Spirit, into the likeness of Jesus. This news is hope beyond our imagination, it is light shining in the darkness, water to those dying of thirst, and it is free. Freely given, freely received. It is also available to all, men and women, young and old, of any race or nation, all are eligible, all are invited to join those who have found hope in what God has done for us through Jesus.
Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Ephesus about the transition from hopelessness to hope: "
remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ." - Ephesians 2:12-13
Living life while ignoring our spiritual need, a need all human beings share, is the path to despair. Faith in Jesus is not a magic elixir, it doesn't take away all our troubles, or make us immune to pain and sorrow, but it does provide a foundation upon which we can stand, a shelter in times of storm. As the writer of Hebrews put it: "
we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." Hebrews 6:18b-19
The local church is a community, a group of people who have acknowledged their own shortcoming and have chosen to put their faith and hope in the sinless person of Jesus instead of themselves. They are not perfect, but they are will one day be perfected by God. They are not free from difficulty in this life, but they know that in the next they will see the face of God and all sorrow will be no more. They worship, pray, and serve those in need,
together, because God created us to be social, because we can shoulder each others burdens, and because there is great joy in being a part of the family of God.
Despair has lowered the life expectancy of the average American, but it doesn't have to be this way. The problem derives from the spiritual barrenness that afflicts so many, and the solution addresses that very problem. Belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ is faith, and faith belongs to a powerful trio: faith, hope, and love.
