Obama’s campaign rhetoric, centered on “Hope,” but what exactly does “Hope” mean, and did Obama win the election because of this one word that he essentially hijacked?

First, let’s consider the definitions (According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary):

• Hope: to cherish a desire with anticipation, to desire with expectation of obtainment, to expect with confidence, trust.

• Trust:  assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something; one in which confidence is placed; dependence on something future or contingent; hope.

• Despair: to lose all hope or confidence

Second, let’s consider some questions:

1) Why do we feel a politician we know little about is worthy of the trust required to place “hope” in someone?

2) Why do we feel it unnecessary to examine this person and their actions critically before placing our trust in them?

3) What is it this person can do that gives us hope in him more than anyone else?

And finally…..

4) What do these answers say about our society?

The answer to the final one is what worries me.

Hope is a concept woven throughout the Bible that has always been closely associated with God. I am not a theologian, but I am a practicing Catholic, and I know from experience that when times have become so difficult, the stakes have been so high, that the person I had to turn to was God, He was truly my last, and it turned out, TRUE source of hope. However, it also makes sense.

People individually have little true control over their lives, I believe how you choose to approach life and the way you choose to react is all you really have any control over. So how much sense does it make to place hope in a person, who is subject to just as many unforeseen circumstances and intervening factors as you do. It just doesn’t.

Now, one may say, “Hey, you are reading way too much into this,” but I am not so sure that I am. Surely initially and on a conscious level, no on probably saw Obama as any real source of hope, it was campaign rhetoric, but sometime during the repetition, some people, probably more than I want to consider, began believing Obama was WORTH placing their hope in.  Again, why? I do not think an assessment of worthiness was what actually happened though. I propose that it is because people are craving hope in today’s world. – Okay? So what is new? People always want hope for the future, people hope for things all the time. But I am talking about a deeper level of hope.

Many less people in society today, as compared to just 15-20 years ago, have a relationship with God that allows them to trust God, which is a prerequisite for allowing all, or even most, of our hope to rest in God. It is the same reason people lose themselves in extreme behavior, like drinking excessively, promiscuity, drugs, devoting their lives to obtaining money, or being famous. When you do not have hope, you do not have patience to endure suffering, or even displeasure. That is a symptom America knows well, though many attribute the “instant gratification” problem to the fact that things are so accessible due to advancing technology and communication.  So it becomes circular. You do not have the patience – so drugs or sex, or spending money, all allow for more instant gratification – which leads you to need MORE instant gratification (and lowers self-esteem, which we will get to in a moment), which essentially leads back to deciding whom to trust on a bit of a whim, including presidential candidates, because you don’t have the patience to really evaluate and DECIDE if you should trust them.

This extreme behavior all originates for dual reasons. First, because people have emptiness they are trying to fill, these people are reaching and reaching in all the wrong directions. All of that behavior undermines self-esteem and self-worth, and part of the source of value and self-worth, is being loved. So we try to be famous, we are not chaste and do not respect ourselves - and lead others to believe they do not need to either, we hide from ourselves behind intoxicants,  and we are all searching wildly for love by those very actions. And yes, many people were not loved by their parents the way they should be growing up, some people don’t believe they are worthy of love for one reason or another, and while it is a great start in life to have parents you believe love you unconditionally, even that kind of unconditional love is miniscule compared to the kind of unconditional love God has for us.   It all comes down to the fact that everyone just wants to be loved – the problem is that most people do not understand what that actually means… but we will save that for another day.

Now we (as a society) are searching for love in not only all the wrong ways,  but in all the wrong places. You can only be loved for “you” and know you have intrinsic worth as a person when you know that it is not dependent on your actions – and only God can provide that. However, whether you believe in God or not, whether you have a relationship with Him or not, everyone is still searching for the same thing, regardless of whether it is something of which you are conscious .

Studies and polls that show less and less people regard themselves as “religious” individuals, we have a society promoting moral relativism even within our church’s, but God’s “law” and God’s truth does not change with the times, perhaps our understanding of it may change, but the fundamental reasons do not – the Bible does not change. However, society drifts further away and people begin evading, rather than seeking out the embrace of God’s love. But the yearning for God that is in our hearts, which we often cannot figure out – does not change, just as the Bible does not change. Regardless of whether or not you can identify it or you understand it, it is there, and that yearning by people who do not really understand what hope is really all about, have been exploited by Obama.

I know exploited is a strong word – however, using people’s desire and need for something to place their hope in, IS exploitation. A person should vote for you because you represent their interests, not a miscellaneous concept of hope. Hope for what?  A government handout? The end of war? The end of hunger? For “government reform” which is itself a miscellaneous term that one can attach few concrete ideas to?  So this explains the “Obama-mania” to some extent, this explains why people have adopted an almost religious obsession with the man. Because they, by placing BLIND hope in Obama, have treated Obama in a similar emotional vein as the way those of us who are religious, place our hope and trust in the Lord. When you trust and place your hope in God, however, blind faith is what it is all about, blind except for the fact that you know God loves you and wants what is best for you.  God IS omniscient and omnipotent, God DOES have the power to control our environment, and no human being does, including  Mr. Obama.

[As a side note, I say BLIND, because Obama had only one term in the senate, was a community organizer, and a law professor, and none of those things show the kind of leadership experience needed to run the entire United States – and since the United States acts as a parent/global police for many other countries – you have to “lead” with them in mind.]

Additionally, though I think it best to trust actions rather than words when one is assessing another’s integrity, trustworthiness, and ideals; there are many trustworthy and trusting people who take a man’s word at face value. That was fine to do at one point in history, but I believe that point has passed and we will have to work hard to return to it.

The fact remains, that I do believe, whether intentionally or not, (only God knows what is in a man’s heart, so I will not presume to know, though I have my suspicions), that Obama hijacked hope, supplanting himself as the savior for our nation – and because of our social climate he hit a Gold Mine. He did not just do so figuratively, he caught the wandering souls with his rhetoric, and stuck a metaphotical bandaid over that emptiness we feel in our life when we struggle to find meaning in the absense of a relationship with God.

What happens next? Well, what happens when someone fails you whom you placed great trust in, more trust that people place in the average President, more trust because it TAKES great trust to have true hope in someone?

Well, at the end of a romantic relationship, when trust is broken, how do you react? How do you feel? – There is your answer. And what happens when things first start to go downhill in that romantic relationship? You make excuses for the person, you are in denial, you justify the fact that they take you for granted, and take advantage of you. There is your answer.

Let us hope that Americans and American voters do not make even more poor decisions when they are “rebounding.”