The Paradoxes of Faith, Hope, and Love
July 14, 2023 | Season 1, Issue 6
If you've followed my story over the past few years, you might see it as one of overcoming adversity through hard work and optimism. And that is mostly true.
Maybe your mind has created a caricature of what my optimism has looked like. An overwhelming and unrelenting type of optimism. Some might even say an annoying type of optimism. As if I were SpongeBob Squarepants and baseball is my "Bikini Bottom." Every day I wake up and start chanting, "I'M READY! I'M READY! I'M READY!"
But this is far from the truth.
Don't get me wrong, I am deeply optimistic.
But I don't have an optimism that ignores the hard realities of life. That ignores the obstacles standing in my way, both internal and external.
The thing is, this type of optimism comes at a cost...
Simple Faith
It's November 2021. I'm meeting my therapist Ben for the first time. I'm in a bind. I'm discouraged by my performance from this season and can sense despair setting in.
It has been 8 and a half long years of professional baseball. I haven't had a good season yet. I've had three surgeries. I've already retired and come out of retirement. And through all this, I am still completely unsure whether any of this is worth it.
Do I keep playing in 2022? Or do I hang up my cleats?
I need is to make a decision about next year. That's the practical next step. But what I ultimately need is to have peace with that decision. If I play, I want to be "all in." I want to have joy in the middle of the inevitable ups and downs a season brings. And if I am done with baseball for good, I want to have gratitude for what my career has been.
Ben and I spend our time making a game plan for the next few month. And as we are finishing our session, Ben says something that catches me off guard:
"The degree to which you believe good things can happen is the degree to which our work will be effective. The more you believe, the more you will change. And the more you change, the better you will feel."
My initial reaction? Yeah, right...
I have never been (and probably will never be) a "blind optimism" kind of guy.
So... how can I believe in the depths of my soul that good things can happen if good things haven't happened yet? How can I expect for change to come if change hasn't come yet?
Can it really be that simple?
The answer is yes.
It's just not what I think...
Faith, Hope, and Love
Under the surface, Ben is saying that the good things that come might not be the good things I want to come. My expectations and what actually happens might be completely different.
The belief Ben is talking about is a complete reorientation of how I interpret my life.
Instead of defining good and bad on my own terms, I am being challenged to find the good in all my circumstances. Sometimes it is easy to see. And sometimes I have to dig for it. But it's always there.
And if I can believe it is there even if I can't see it, everything changes.
Some call this optimism. I call it faith. Optimism, to me, seems like a practice that often ignores reality. Faith soberly looks at reality and still finds the good in every moment and every circumstance.
But for faith to do this, it needs its counterparts: hope and love.
The apostle Paul connects faith, hope, and love time and time again in his letters to the churches (which make up most of the New Testament of the Bible).
For Paul, it is impossible to have faith without hope and love. It is impossible to love without faith and hope. It is impossible to have hope without love and faith.
The love of God gives us hope for the future and provides faith for today. Faith practically shows itself is by loving God and loving others. Faith is sustained by a hope for eternity (the promise of God's love).
Said another way: Faith is the act. Hope is the object. Love is the source.
It's all connected. And that is why Paul at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 says:
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. –– 1 Corinthians 13:13
Faith isn't an ignorant "wishing for the best" while floating through life. It is having a hope that is greater than the desired outcomes of our efforts. And it is rooted in love.
Is it simple? Yes.
Is it easy? No.
The reality is having a strong faith, robust hope, and deep love comes at a cost...
Doubt, Despair, and Pain
I recently read a quote by Parker Palmer from his book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.
I can't stop thinking about it:
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings.
If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love.”
For all my life, I've seen these as mutually exclusive:
Faith and Doubt
Hope and Despair
Love and Pain
But Palmer is saying they are two sides of the same coin. You can't have faith, hope, or love without doubt, despair, or pain. And the greater you have of one, the greater you have of the other.
Understanding this is helping me make sense of the last 5 years of my life.
Back in March, I was released from the Phillies and I wrote this:
“One thing I do know is that I feel grief when I've lost something or someone. In fact, that is a pretty good definition for it: Grief is the natural response to loss in life. But it doesn't come from losing anything. It's the response to losing what I deeply love, what I'm incredibly grateful for.”
This pain and sadness I felt only made sense because of the love I poured out. Without love, there would be no pain.
And this line of reasoning applies to doubt and despair as well.
I had shoulder surgery in October 2018. That marked the beginning of my comeback. And two and half years later, I found myself on a professional mound for the first time in almost 4 years.
It was momentous. But I can't tell you how many hours, days, weeks and months leading up to that moment I spent asking, "Can this actually happen? Can I actually make it back?"
The doubt was palpable. But now, I see that doubt only existed because I had such a deep faith.
And when I met with Ben in November 2021, I could sense despair setting in. I hated it. And I felt shame questioning my life. I lacked confidence and clarity.
But now, I understand just how robust my hope was.
The Price We Must Pay
We live in a society that avoids suffering at all costs. The pain. The despair. The doubt. We run from them like the plague.
But what if we looked at these feelings and experiences through a more hopeful lens? What if our suffering is simply a reminder that we are human?
I've never met a person who doesn't want more faith, more hope, and more love. It's just how we are wired. We are bound to the design we were born into. Everyone must eat food, drink water, and sleep to survive. Everyone desires faith, hope, and love. It is as much a part of us as breathing. We can't avoid it.
And if we are bound to these things simply because we are human, we are also bound to suffering that comes. The pain of losing someone or something we love. The despair of waiting for something we hope for. The doubt that comes when it seems like our faith is in vain.
When we find ourselves in the middle of the darkness, let us be reminded these seasons are simply the price we must pay for the beauty God has put deep inside us.
Keep going. It's worth it.
