Hope​—Does It Really Make a Difference?

HE WAS only ten years old, but Daniel had been battling cancer for a year. His doctors had given up hope, as had others close to the boy. But Daniel held on to hope. He believed that he would grow up to be a researcher and help to find a cure for cancer someday. He was especially hopeful regarding the upcoming visit of a doctor who specialized in treating his particular form of cancer. When the day arrived, though, the specialist was forced to cancel his visit because of bad weather. Daniel’s spirits sank. For the first time, he became listless. He died within a few days.

Daniel’s account was related by a health-care worker who studied the role that hope and hopelessness play in relation to health. You may have heard similar stories. An elderly person, for example, lies near death but is eager to reach some long-anticipated milestone​—whether the visit of a loved one or simply an anniversary. When the event has come and gone, death quickly ensues. What is at work in such cases? Can hope really be as potent a force as some believe?

A growing number of medical researchers suggest that optimism, hope, and other positive emotions indeed have a powerful effect on a person’s life and health. But such views are hardly unanimous. Some researchers dismiss all such claims as a lot of unscientific folklore. They prefer to think that physical ailments have strictly physical causes.

Of course, skepticism about the importance of hope is not new. Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle was asked to define hope and replied: “It is a waking dream.” And more recently, the American statesman Benjamin Franklin observed tartly: “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”

What, then, is the truth about hope? Is it always mere wishful thinking, a way for people to seek comfort in empty dreams? Or is there valid reason to see hope as something more​—something that all of us need for the sake of health and happiness, something with real basis and real benefits?

Why Do We Need Hope?

WHAT if Daniel, the young cancer victim described at the outset of the preceding article, had maintained his high hopes? Would he have beaten cancer? Would he be alive today? Even the most ardent proponents of hope would probably stop short of making such claims. And therein lies an important point. Hope should not be oversold. It is no cure-all, no panacea.

In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Nathan Cherney warned about the danger of overplaying the power of hope when dealing with very sick patients: “We’ve had situations of husbands berating their wives that they haven’t been doing enough meditation, that they haven’t been thinking positively enough.” Dr. Cherney added: “This whole school of thought created an illusion of control, and when people do poorly, it’s as if to say they haven’t managed to control their tumor well enough, and that’s not fair.”

In truth, those combating a terminal illness are engaged in an exhausting, consuming battle. Adding guilt to their already heavy burden is surely the last thing that their loved ones would want to do. Should we conclude, then, that hope is without value?

Not at all. The same doctor, for instance, specializes in palliative care​—that is, treatments focusing, not on fighting disease directly or even on prolonging life, but on making the patient’s life more comfortable and pleasant as long as the fight lasts. Such doctors believe firmly in the value of treatments that lead to a happier state of mind, even in the very sick. There is considerable evidence that hope can do that​—and more.

The Value of Hope

“Hope is powerful therapy,” asserts medical journalist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones. He reviewed various studies carried out to determine the value of emotional support given to terminally ill patients. Presumably, this type of support helps people to maintain a more hopeful and positive outlook. One 1989 study found that patients who received such support survived longer, whereas recent research has been less conclusive on that score. However, studies have confirmed that patients who receive emotional support suffer less depression and less pain than do those without it.

Consider another study that focused on the role of optimism and pessimism in coronary heart disease (CHD). A group of over 1,300 men were carefully evaluated as to whether they had an optimistic or a pessimistic way of looking at life. A follow-up ten years later found that over 12 percent of those men had suffered some form of CHD. Among them, the pessimists outnumbered the optimists by nearly 2 to 1. Laura Kubzansky, assistant professor of health and social behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health, comments: “Most of the evidence for the notion that ‘thinking positively’ is good for your health has been anecdotal​—this study provides some of the first hard medical evidence for this idea in the arena of heart disease.”

Some studies have found that those who rate their own health as poor actually fare worse in the wake of surgery than do those who rate their health as optimal. Even longevity has been linked with optimism. One study looked at how the elderly are affected by positive and negative views of aging. When older people were exposed to fleeting messages linking the aging process with increased wisdom and experience, they were thereafter found to walk with increased strength and energy. In fact, the improvement was equivalent to the results of a 12-week exercise program!

Why do such emotions as hope, optimism, and a positive outlook seem to benefit health? Perhaps scientists and doctors do not yet understand the human mind and body well enough to provide definitive answers. Still, experts who study the subject can make educated guesses. For instance, one professor of neurology suggests: “It feels good to be happy and hopeful. It’s an enjoyable state that produces very little stress, and the body thrives in those conditions. It’s one more thing that people can do for themselves to try to stay healthy.”

This notion may strike some doctors, psychologists, and scientists as ground breaking, but it is hardly new to students of the Bible. Nearly 3,000 years ago, wise King Solomon was inspired to put this thought in writing: “A heart that is joyful does good as a curer, but a spirit that is stricken makes the bones dry.” (Proverbs 17:22) Note the balance reflected here. This verse does not say that a joyful heart will cure any ailment but simply that it “does good as a curer.”

In fact, it might be fair to ask, If hope were a medicine, what doctor would not prescribe it? Moreover, hope has benefits that extend far beyond the realm of health.

Optimism, Pessimism, and Your Life

Researchers have found that optimists benefit in many ways from their positive outlook. They tend to perform better in school, at work, and even on the athletic field. For example, a study was made of a women’s track team. The coaches provided a thorough assessment of the women’s pure athletic abilities. At the same time, the women themselves were surveyed and their level of hope carefully assessed. As it turned out, the women’s measure of hope was a far more accurate predictor of their performance than were all the statistics evaluated by their coaches. Why does hope have such a powerful influence?

Much has been learned by studying the opposite of optimism​—pessimism. During the 1960’s, experiments yielded an unexpected finding regarding animal behavior, leading researchers to coin the phrase “learned helplessness.” They found that humans too can suffer from a form of this syndrome. For example, human test subjects were exposed to an unpleasant noise and told that they could learn to stop it by pressing a sequence of buttons. They succeeded in stopping the noise.

A second group was told the same thing​—but pressing the buttons had no effect. As you can imagine, many among that second group developed feelings of helplessness. In later tests, they were hesitant to take any action at all. They were convinced that nothing they did would make any difference. Even in that second group, though, the optimists refused to give in to such a helpless frame of mind.

Dr. Martin Seligman, who helped to design some of those early experiments, was moved to make a career of studying optimism and pessimism. He delved into the kind of thinking exhibited by people who were prone to view themselves as helpless. Such pessimistic thinking, he concluded, hampers people in many of life’s endeavors or even paralyzes them into inaction. Seligman summarizes pessimistic thinking and its effects this way: “Twenty-five years of study has convinced me that if we habitually believe, as does the pessimist, that misfortune is our fault, is enduring, and will undermine everything we do, more of it will befall us than if we believe otherwise.”

Again, such conclusions may seem new to some today, but they have a ring of familiarity to students of the Bible. Note this proverb: “Have you shown yourself discouraged in the day of distress? Your power will be scanty.” (Proverbs 24:10) Yes, the Bible clearly explains that discouragement, with its negative thoughts, will sap you of power to act. What, though, can you do to fight pessimism and bring more optimism and hope into your life?

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Hope can do a great deal of good

You Can Fight Pessimism

HOW do you view the setbacks you experience? Many experts now believe that the answer to that question says a great deal about whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. We all suffer various hard trials in life, some of us more than others. Why, though, do some people seem to bounce back from hardships, ready to try again, whereas others seem to give up after even relatively minor difficulties?

For instance, imagine that you are looking for a job. You go to an interview and get turned down. How do you think about this event afterward? You might take it very personally and view it as a permanent problem, telling yourself, ‘No one would hire someone like me. I’ll never get a job.’ Or, worse, you could let this single setback color your view of every aspect of your life, thinking, ‘I’m a total failure. I’m no use to anybody.’ In each case, such thinking is the essence of pessimism.

Battling Pessimism

How can you fight back? Learning to recognize such negative thoughts is a vital first step. The next step is to fight against them. Look for reasonable alternative explanations. For example, is it really true that you were turned down because no one would hire you? Or is it possible that the employer was simply looking for someone with other qualifications?

Using specific facts, expose those pessimistic thoughts that are overreactions. Does one rejection really mean that you are a total failure, or can you think of other areas in your life​—such as your spiritual pursuits, family relationships, or friendships—​where you have a measure of success? Learn to dismiss your more dire predictions as mere “catastrophizing.” After all, can you really know that you will never find a job? There is more you can do to push aside negative thinking.

Positive, Goal-Oriented Thinking

In recent years researchers have developed an intriguing, if rather narrow, definition of hope. They say that hope involves the belief that you will be able to meet your goals. As the next article will show, hope actually involves much more, but this definition seems useful in a number of ways. Focusing on this aspect of personal hope can help us to develop more positive, goal-oriented thinking.

If we are to believe that we can meet our future goals, we need to build up a record of setting goals and meeting them. If you feel that you do not have such a record, it may be worthwhile to think seriously about the goals that you set for yourself. First, do you have any? It is all too easy to get caught up in the routine and bustle of life without stopping to think about what we really want out of life, what matters most to us. Regarding this practical principle of establishing clear priorities, we again find that long ago the Bible said it well: “Make sure of the more important things.”​—Philippians 1:10.

Once we set our priorities, it becomes easier to pick some key goals in various areas, such as in our spiritual life, our family life, our secular life. It is essential, though, that we do not set too many goals at first and that we make each goal one that we know we can readily reach. If a goal is too difficult to reach, it may daunt us, and we might give up. Hence, it is often best to break down larger, long-term goals into smaller, short-term ones.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way.” Thus runs an old adage, and there seems to be some truth in it. Once we have key goals in mind, we need the willpower​—the desire and the determination—​to strive to reach them. We may strengthen that determination by contemplating the value of our goals and the rewards that will come to us by reaching them. Of course, obstacles will arise, but we need to view them as challenges instead of dead ends.

However, we also need to think of practical ways to meet our goals. Author C. R. Snyder, who has made an extensive study of the value of hope, suggests thinking of multiple ways to reach any given goal. Thus, when one way does not work out, we may resort to a second, a third, and so on.

Snyder also recommends learning when to trade in one goal for another. If we are truly blocked from reaching a goal, brooding on it will only discourage us. On the other hand, replacing it with a more realistic goal will give us something else to hope for.

The Bible contains an illuminating example in this regard. King David cherished the goal of building a temple for his God, Jehovah. But God told David that his son Solomon was to have that privilege instead. Rather than sulking or trying to persist in the face of this disappointing development, David changed his goals. He threw his energies into collecting the funds and materials that his son would need in order to complete the project.​—1 Kings 8:17-19; 1 Chronicles 29:3-7.

Even if we succeed in building up our personal level of hope by fighting pessimism and by developing positive, goal-oriented thinking, we may still have a profound deficit when it comes to hope. How so? Well, much of the hopelessness that we face in this world comes from factors completely beyond our control. When we contemplate the overwhelming problems that afflict mankind​—the poverty, the wars, the injustices, the ever-looming threats of sickness and death—​how can we maintain a hopeful outlook?

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If rejected for a job you wanted, do you assume that you will never get a job?

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King David showed flexibility when it came to goals

Where Can You Find Real Hope?

YOUR watch has stopped and appears to be broken. When it comes to getting it fixed, you face a profusion of choices. Advertisements for watch repair abound, all of them making confident claims, some of them contradictory. But what if you find out that a neighbor of yours is the ingenious man who designed that particular watch years ago? What is more, you learn that he is willing to help you, free of charge. Your choice would seem clear, wouldn’t it?

Now compare that watch to your own ability to hope. If you find that you are losing hope​—as many are in these troubled times—​where will you turn for help? Any number of people claim to be able to fix the problem, but the countless suggestions can be confusing and contradictory. So why not go to the One who designed mankind with the capacity for hope in the first place? The Bible says that “he is not far off from each one of us” and that he is more than willing to help.​—Acts 17:27; 1 Peter 5:7.

A Deeper Definition of Hope

The Bible’s concept of hope is broader and more profound than the one in common use among today’s doctors, scientists, and psychologists. The original-language words used in the Bible that are translated “hope” mean to wait eagerly and to expect good. Basically, hope is composed of two elements. It involves the desire for something good as well as the basis for believing that good will come. The hope offered in the Bible is not mere wishful thinking. It has a solid basis in fact and evidence.

In this regard, hope is akin to faith, which must be based on evidence​—not gullibility. (Hebrews 11:1) Still, the Bible distinguishes between faith and hope.​—1 Corinthians 13:13.

To illustrate: When you ask a dear friend for a favor, you may hope that he will help you out. Your hope is not without basis because you have faith in your friend​—you know him well, and you have seen him act with kindness and generosity in the past. Your faith and your hope are closely related, even interdependent, but they are distinct. How can you have such hope in God?

The Basis for Hope

God is the source of true hope. In Bible times Jehovah was called “the hope of Israel.” (Jeremiah 14:8) Any reliable hope that his people had came from him; thus, he was their hope. Such hope did not amount to mere wishing. God gave them a solid basis for hope. In dealing with them over the centuries, he built up a record of promises made and promises kept. Their leader Joshua said to Israel: “You well know . . . that not one word out of all the good words that Jehovah your God has spoken to you has failed.”​—Joshua 23:14.

Thousands of years later, that record still stands. The Bible is full of God’s remarkable promises as well as the accurate historical record of their fulfillment. His prophetic promises are so reliable that they are sometimes recorded as if they were already fulfilled at the time they were made.

That is why we may speak of the Bible as the book of hope. As you study the record of God’s dealings with humans, your reasons for putting your hope in him will only grow stronger. The apostle Paul wrote: “All the things that were written aforetime were written for our instruction, that through our endurance and through the comfort from the Scriptures we might have hope.”​—Romans 15:4.

What Hope Does God Give Us?

When do we feel the greatest need for hope? Is it not when we face death? For many, though, it is at just such a moment​—when death takes a loved one, for example—​that hope seems the most elusive. After all, what could be more hopeless than death? It relentlessly pursues each one of us. We can avoid it only for so long, and we are powerless to reverse it. Fittingly, the Bible calls death “the last enemy.”​—1 Corinthians 15:26.

How, then, can we find hope in the face of death? Well, the Bible verse that calls death the last enemy also says that this foe will be “brought to nothing.” Jehovah God is stronger than death. He has proved it on numerous occasions. How? By resurrecting the dead. The Bible describes nine different occasions when God used his power to bring dead individuals back to life.

In an outstanding instance, Jehovah empowered his Son, Jesus, to resurrect his dear friend named Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. Jesus did this, not in secret, but openly, in front of a crowd of onlookers.​—John 11:38-48, 53; 12:9, 10.

You might wonder, ‘Why were people resurrected? Did they not grow old and eventually die again anyway?’ They did. Yet, because of reliable resurrection accounts such as this one, we can have more than a mere desire that our dead loved ones will live again; we have reason to believe that they will. In other words, we have genuine hope.

Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25) He is the One whom Jehovah will empower to perform resurrections on a global scale. Jesus said: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear [Christ’s] voice and come out.” (John 5:28, 29) Yes, all those sleeping in the grave have the prospect of being resurrected to life on a paradise earth.

The prophet Isaiah painted this touching picture of the resurrection: “Thy dead live, their bodies will rise again. They that sleep in the earth will awake and shout for joy; for thy dew is a dew of sparkling light, and the earth will bring those long dead to birth again.”​—Isaiah 26:19, The New English Bible.

Is that not comforting? The dead are in the safest situation imaginable, like an infant protected within its mother’s womb. Indeed, those resting in the grave are perfectly preserved within the limitless memory of Almighty God. (Luke 20:37, 38) And soon they will be brought back to life, entering a happy, welcoming world much the way a newborn is greeted by a loving, waiting family! So, there is hope even in the face of death.

What Hope Can Do for You

Paul teaches us much about the value of hope. He spoke of hope as a vital part of a spiritual suit of armor​—the helmet. (1 Thessalonians 5:8) What did he mean by that? Well, in Bible times a soldier wore a metal helmet into battle, often over a felt or leather cap. Thanks to the helmet, most blows to the head would glance off instead of doing fatal damage. Paul’s point? As a helmet protects the head, so hope protects the mind, the thinking faculties. If you have a solid hope in line with God’s purposes, your peace of mind need not be shattered by panic or despair when you face hardships. Who of us does not need such a helmet?

Paul used another vivid illustration for hope linked to God’s will. He wrote: “This hope we have as an anchor for the soul, both sure and firm.” (Hebrews 6:19) A survivor of more than one shipwreck, Paul well knew the value of an anchor. When beset by a storm, sailors would lower the ship’s anchor. If it caught on the seabed and held tight, the ship would have a chance of riding out the storm in relative safety instead of being blown toward shore to crash on the rocks.

Likewise, if God’s promises are for us a “sure and firm” hope, that hope can help us to weather the turmoil of these stormy times. Jehovah promises that a time will soon come when mankind will no longer be plagued by wars, crime, sorrow, or even death. (See the box on page 10.) Clinging to that hope can help us to steer clear of disaster, giving us the incentive we need to live by God’s standards instead of giving in to the chaotic, immoral spirit so prevalent in the world today.

The hope that Jehovah offers also involves you personally. He wants you to experience life as he meant for you to live it. His desire is that “all sorts of men should be saved.” How? First, each one must “come to an accurate knowledge of truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) The publishers of this journal urge you to take in that life-giving knowledge regarding the truth of God’s Word. The hope that God will thereby give you is far superior to any hope you can find in this world.

With such hope, you need never feel helpless, for God can give you the strength you need to meet any goals you may have that are in harmony with his will. (2 Corinthians 4:7; Philippians 4:13) Is that not the kind of hope you need? So if you are in need of hope, if you have been searching for it, take courage. Hope is at hand. You can find it!

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Reasons for Hope

These Scriptural thoughts can help you build up your hope:

◼ God promises a happy future.

His Word says that the earth will become a global paradise inhabited by a happy, united human family.​—Psalm 37:11, 29; Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:3, 4.

◼ God cannot lie.

He detests lying in all its forms. Jehovah is infinitely holy or pure, so lying is impossible for him.​—Proverbs 6:16-19; Isaiah 6:2, 3; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18.

◼ God has unlimited power.

Jehovah alone is almighty. Nothing in the universe can prevent him from fulfilling his promises.​—Exodus 15:11; Isaiah 40:25, 26.

◼ God wants you to live forever.

​—John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:3, 4.

◼ God looks at us with hope.

He chooses to focus, not on our faults and failings, but on our good qualities and efforts. (Psalm 103:12-14; 130:3; Hebrews 6:10) He hopes that we will do what is right and is pleased when we do.​—Proverbs 27:11.

◼ God promises to help you meet godly goals.

His servants need never feel helpless. God gives generously of his holy spirit, the strongest force there is, to help us.​—Philippians 4:13.

◼ Hope in God is never misplaced.

Completely reliable and trustworthy, he will never let you down.​—Psalm 25:3.

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As a helmet protects the head, so hope protects the mind

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Like an anchor, a solidly founded hope can provide stability

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Courtesy René Seindal/Su concessione del Museo Archeologico Regionale A. Salinas di Palermo