Years ago, Chuck Colson asked, \u201cWhere is the hope?\u201d Too many Americans today have no answer, and it\u2019s showing.<\/p>\n
For the third year in a row, according to a November report from the Centers for Disease Control, American life expectancy dropped.<\/p>\n
The last time this happened was a century ago, in the years 1915-1918, years marked by our entry into World War I and the outbreak of the \u201cSpanish Flu\u201d pandemic, which killed 675,000 Americans.<\/p>\n
This time, neither war nor pestilence is behind the drop in life expectancy. The threats are not external, but internal.<\/p>\n
The biggest factors behind the drop in life expectancy among Americans over the last three years are drug overdoses and suicides. In 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, and approximately 45,000 people intentionally took their own lives.<\/p>\n
These deaths, along with alcohol-related deaths, have been dubbed \u201cdeaths of despair\u201d by researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton.<\/p>\n
The \u201cdespair\u201d referred to by Case and Deaton is largely economic, resulting from diminished job prospects and other personal disappointments. As Case put it, \u201cYour family life has fallen apart, you don\u2019t know your kids anymore, all the things you expected when you started out your life just haven\u2019t happened at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, people, usually but not always men, turn to alcohol and drugs to ease their pain. An increasing number take their own lives.<\/p>\n
Certainly, Case and Deaton\u2019s explanation is partially true. But it doesn\u2019t explain the 30-percent rise in suicide rates among 15-to-24 year-olds, who haven\u2019t experienced these kinds of disappointments. Nor does material deprivation explain why the suicide rate among African Americans and Hispanics is only about a third that of white Americans despite being, on average, poorer.<\/p>\n
Something else is going on. And it\u2019s related to the word \u201cdespair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chuck Colson and his friend Richard John Neuhaus used to remind people that despair is a sin. Now if you define \u201cdespair\u201d as extreme sorrow or grief, then calling it a sin seems cruel and unfeeling.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not really what despair is. In the Christian view, despair is the opposite of hope. Thomas Aquinas wrote that despair \u201cis due to a man\u2019s failure to hope that he will share in the goodness of God.\u201d For Aquinas, despair was more dangerous than even unbelief or hatred of God because \u201cby hope we are called back from evils and induced to strive for what is good, and if hope is lost, men fall headlong into vices, and are taken away from good works.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Aquinas, \u201cnothing is more execrable than despair. For he who despairs loses his constancy in the daily labors of this life, and what is worse, loses his constancy in the endeavor of faith.\u201d As the sixth-century theologian Isidore of Seville put it, \u201cto commit a crime is death to the soul; but to despair is to descend into hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a better word than \u201cHell\u201d to describe the despair we are seeing in so many American communities, I\u2019m not aware of it.<\/p>\n
Still the question remains, \u201cWhat is the source of this despair?\u201d The answer lies in Aquinas\u2019 words \u201cshare in the goodness of God.\u201d Put simply, Americans place their hope in the wrong thing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not only referring to those who kill themselves, whether deliberately or indirectly. They\u2019re merely the most vulnerable victims of a worldview that has us, in Isaiah\u2019s words, spending money on that which is not bread, and working for what doesn\u2019t satisfy.<\/p>\n
Their disappointment is more keenly felt than ours, but make no mistake, the expectations our culture imposes on us will ultimately end in death. If not physical death, spiritual death. We\u2019re told to seek satisfaction from things that cannot ultimately satisfy us, such as sex, stuff, and self.<\/p>\n
The results are what Aquinas would have predicted: a headlong fall into vice and away from seeking to do good. The most vulnerable among us wind up paying the ultimate price.<\/p>\n
But to know Christ and His resurrection is to know hope. May we never hide that in a culture that needs it so desperately.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Resources<\/p>\n
\u201cU.S. life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I,\u201d by Lenny Bernstein, Washington Post , November 29, 2018; < https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/health-science\/us-life-expectancy-declines-again-a-dismal-trend-not-seen-since-world-war-i\/2018\/11\/28\/ae58bc8c-f28c-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html >.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2018 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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