The following is a blog post in part responding to C.S. Lewis' We have no Right to Happiness. If you are a random passerby, stop for a minute, read the short essay, and feel free to comment, question, discuss, and/or debate.
Hope and longing are similar words, but have distinctive emotions backing them. While you may hope for a specific present you'd wanted for holiday or no rain on a day you'd like to have a picnic, you would not long for those things. Longing is stronger than hope; you would long for a victory in some feat you'd been struggling with for a long time, or for a spouse to love. This distinction in levels between hope and longing is important when looking at the greater scheme of life.
Fulfillment in life is something that humans seek to achieve. We look for things to fill dissatisfaction in our lives by saving for a new car, or indulging in some sort of sexual pleasure. However even once each of these and/or any other worldly tasks are achieved, they only occasionally grant satisfaction and never for an indefinite amount of time. Life, for humans, has become a basic game of a child's toy:
Hope, longing, and sehnsucht form three tiers of desire we have as individuals. We hope for things that are not necessary; we long for things that we feel are necessary; we sehnsucht for the one thing that can fill all. In the end life fulfillment comes from sehnsucht alone, but the others are temporary fixes.
When trying to fulfill our life with anything but God, we will find that it's much like playing a famous game, but with a minor twist:
http://www.playtetrisgames.org/hell.html
6 comments:
I love the way you digress on the definitions of longing, hope and fulfillment and the comparison to blocks that need to fit tightly...
Yes! only in heaven will we be able to see what the real picture looks like and all the pieces will fall in place!
What you think this knowledge will change for you on a daily basis, as you live out your dreams,hopes and longings?
adriana
Is hope truly weaker than longing? Your example of how we use it in modern language does make it seem like more of a simple preference, a "like". The sort of weak desire when we say "I hope it doesn't rain." However, I feel like that is case where the word has come to mean something other than what it truly is. When I think of hope, I am thinking more in the sense of our hopes and dreams, the sense in which it is the basis for faith, the hope which Plantinga says has a component of longing. Wouldn't that make hope on the tier above longing rather than on the tier below it?
@Adriana, I feel like every time I hear that there is no other fix for our lives than God, it is another reminder to look for him in all things. It is very difficult for me to do, as I have many stumbling blocks in my faith, but I believe that acknowledging that no worldly things can completely satisfy desires again and again will help me make more conscious and God oriented decisions in day to day life.
@Nate, the definition of hope is fairly blurry as per google, while the definition of longing is very clear. I believe if you look up their actual meanings, you'll find that hope is the more lighthearted one. Whether or not there is longing in hope is of no consequence, because even if there is, hope also has a twinge of lightheartedness that longing does not. While hope has many definitions by google, all of which I found not to be strong desires, the definition for longing is blatant: prolonged unfulfilled desire or need. So based on our actual language, hope is below longing. If hope has come to a different definition over the years, then we are simply arguing terminology which is a fruitless debate my brother and I fall into regularly.
I liked the idea of the three different tiers. Nate, I think you make an interesting point and certainly hope can have different connotations, but I believe that longing is stronger than hope in most cases. There is a flaw with our english language in the way that we use words so interchangeably without a second thought. "I hope class is fun" or "I hope that I God gives me a wife" are two very different kinds of hope, which make it a difficult word to fully describe.
Yet I feel like longing is a term that has a lot of power because of it's connection to time. When you long for something it, at least in my mind, feels like a prolonged hope that passes through a great deal of time. I long for peace and shalom. Certainly I hope for it as well. But I do not long for a sunny day for my picnic.
I think this is a difficult subject to understand since we are limited by our language and the mechanics of each word we use. But I do completely agree that there are levels of hope and longing in our lives, some more desperate or ingrained in us than others.
I the toy illustration. I think that so many of us focus only on earthly pleasures and wants that we forget to focus on what our body needs such as the word of God, healthy relationships with other Christians who keep us responsible and ultimately a close relationship with God our Savior. Nothing can completely fill all the gaps in our lives except the one who died on the cross at Calvary. Our eyes and hearts need to stay focused on heavenly things or else our wants and earthly desires will consume us and that can create monsters of consumption.
Thanks for replying Ben, it's good to see what exactly you were meaning and I definitely would agree that based on our language longing would have to be considered longer than hope. It would be interesting to find what the greek translation for hope is and what the connotations of the word are, whether it would be closer to that deep longing or to a weaker desire and preference.
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