It is that time of year when hope springs eternal.
Australian political and community leaders greeted the new year with words of hope. A common sentiment went like this: ‘There are stormy waters ahead, but there is also great hope for this great nation of ours’.
Really?
The signs are of increasing pessimism in Australia. Many of us expect to be personally worse off over time and expect the same for the nation. Issues such housing affordability, rising power prices, declining trust in the major political parties leave us sullen about the future. Worry about environmental issues, personal security and regional instability rob hope. Many older Australians chase the dream of materialism, hedonism and consumerism only to find that it leaves us crying ‘more, more and more’ then discovering that ‘enough is never enough’. Many younger ones see the emptiness of that dream and walk away, only to discover that a self-absorbed i-world leaves them inwardly empty and clutching at escapism.
The Christian faith has a tension between pessimism and hope.
Christian pessimism is grounded in an understanding of human nature as being deeply flawed due to ancient bad choices that reverberate today and which are repeated generation on generation. As the apostle Paul puts it, we all know something about God but uniformly fail to act on it. The result is a slippery slope from bad to worse in human behaviour. (You can read more about this in Romans 1:18-32). Hope in human goodness flies in the face of our experience.
Seen his way, there is no reason to hope in humanity. Our flawed nature and our natural limitations mean that we cannot help ourselves before the big challenges of life. Whether it is modern Australia, the Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, the imploding western democracies, or one of so many global trouble spots, there are more stormy seas than calm waters on the horizon. Likewise for the personal horizons of many.
Christian hope looks elsewhere. Back to Paul. In another passage he faces the grimness of humanity’s nature without God and without hope (Eph 2:1-3). Next comes two hope-saturated words: “But God …” (Eph 24). Then follows a sketch of the richness of how God’s mercy in Christ create a new reality with a new hope.
This makes the Christian supremely optimistic about the future. This is not the silly optimism of singing ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ as the human tragedy unfolds. Nor is it the Pollyanna-like waffle that says “You will get better” to a dying person. Christan optimism is not blind to historic and personal realities.
Instead, Christian optimism sits alongside the pessimism we may hold about the future of Australia and the globe. Likewise, for those facing a grim personal prognosis. The Christian has no reason to expect that they will escape the personal or collective trends of our times.
However, just as hope starts with those words ‘But God …’, so it lands on God. And so, back to Paul again as he speaks of God’s plan in the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). This is a hope grounded in the Cross of Jesus and pointing to God’s new creation when all will be as it was made to be.
This hope enables the Christan at once to be deeply pessimistic about the human story in history but deeply optimistic about the divine story in eternity. In turn, that hope drives the Christian to invest in the human story by living with engaged activism and by telling others of the ‘But God …’ message. Now that’s a hope that springs eternal for 2026.
David Burke,
Moderator-General,
January 2026
