Hope is a trickster

The above title came from a section in the last chapter of "On Paradise Drive."  I had put this book down for awhile, but was able to finish it up yesterday.  I highly recommend it.  The last chapter is worth the entire cost in my opinion.  Brooks concludes the book by talking about how Americans have always lived oriented toward the future.  We are constantly at work.  Never resting.  Always desiring.  We always believe the next big thing or success is just around the corner.  Few quotes worth noting:

--"Whether in 1704 or 1904 or 2004, Americans have moved to new places because they've felt, sometimes semi-consciously, that they could build some piece of heaven there.  They live in that heaven of their imagination long before they ever get around to constructing it in real life."

--"They don't see that hope is a trickster and a seducer and a torturer.  American culture is more complicated than it seems."

--"Born in abundance, inspired by opportunity, nurtured in imagination, spiritualized by a sense of God's blessing and call, and realized in ordinary life day by day, this Paradise Spell is the controlling ideology of American life.  Just out of reach, just beyond the next ridge, just with the next home or entrepreneurial scheme or diet plan; just iwth the next political hero, the next credit-card purchase, or the next true love; just with the right all-terrain vehicle, the right summer home, the right meditation technique, or the right motivational seminar; just with the right schools, the right community values, and the proper morality; just with the right beer and a good set of buddies; just with the next technology or after the next shopping spree, there is this spot you can get to where all tensions melt, all time pressures are relieved, and all contentment can be realized...thereby producing a new Eden."

--"She dreams of arriving at that resting spot where time does not exist and all striving ceases.  In fact, the American Dream is the dream of finding a place where one will feel liberated from the burden of the future, though that place is always in the future.  The American Dream devours its own flesh."

As I read these concluding pages I felt a number of things.  I felt conviction, for these are the same idols I chase after.  I felt compassion for a world that is chasing after all the wrong things.  But I also felt that this future-mindedness is a gift from God that has simply been misused.  I believe the orientation toward the future, to create a better place, taps into how things really are in the world.  God has commissioned us, as his image bearers, to work and cultivate this earth.  The desire is not wrong, it is just misdirected.  Perhaps the church, and it starts with me individually, can redirect this God-given desire we all experience.