In today’s episode, our speakers explore this question: In a world with so much pain, is it naïve to have hope? And where can we find hope when circumstances are out of our control?
You’ll hear from Esau McCaulley, a New Testament scholar at Wheaton College, and Gary Saul Morson, a Russian literature scholar at Northwestern. In this discussion moderated by The Gospel Coalition editor-in-chief and Northwestern alumnus Collin Hansen, the speakers explore theological and Russian literary perspectives on hope, where they find hope based on their worldviews, and what it means for us to live hopeful lives today.
This forum was held at Northwestern in May 2025. Thank you to the student planning team for making this event possible.
Hope, for me, isn't a positive attitude toward life. I believe that Jesus died and rose again, that there's a future that awaits me, and that my end is not despair and doom but joy. Because of that, I believe that the world has purpose and meaning.
The whole premise of the resurrection is that truth and power can be separated.
Tolstoy had the idea that what really matters most in life is not the grand, noticeable, dramatic moments and events—that's not what your life is all about. It's the sum total of those tiny events that really matter. And if you live those events right, your life will be meaningful.
What was it about what my grandmother believed that allowed her not to be swallowed up by despair in the midst of a Jim Crow South? I had to take her piety as a theologically significant piece of data. And as I ran across the South, where I grew up, that same strength was always present in the people who I admired most. And I recognized nihilism hadn't liberated anybody.
Nothing is better at teaching empathy than great, realist fiction because, for hundreds of pages, you live inside the consciousness of a person completely unlike yourself—from a different culture, gender, or social class. You suffer when that person suffers. And that is a lesson you might bring outside and apply to other people who suffer.
I've never placed hope in an analysis of the present circumstances, because at any given moment the circumstances have never looked good for me. But there's always been providence that was guiding us through. And so I think the idea of hope residing in God's ordering of history has always been a part of my own understanding of the world.
My hope is rooted in a person—and that person influences how I live. So my job isn't to fix the world. My job is to bear witness to something that is greater than myself and to serve those along the way.
