Hope is difficult to foster without a strong faith in God. Life can seem bleak and depressing when holding-on to the worldview that God and religion is a smokescreen.
Pope Benedict XVI opened his encyclical, Spe salvi, with a similar meditation, focusing on the relationship of faith and hope:
“Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith.”
Difficulties of hope without faith
Pope Benedict XVI continues his reflection by explaining how the pagan world was without hope before Jesus Christ:
We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).
Furthermore, Pope Benedict XVI compares life without Christ as to living in "darkness:"
Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13).
The good news is that having a strong faith in God can drastically influence our sense of hope, pointing us to the glory of our future, as Pope Benedict XVI explains:
Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well...the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing.
Without God, it can be difficult to have any hope in life. With God, we can be strengthened by the reality that God is calling us all home to an eternal reward.
