Last weekend I wrote on “hopeless hope,” the flailing, grasping-at-straws attempts many are making to unite Americans by “what we have in common.” Efforts like these hardly rise above sentimental appeals for all to just get along, please. They may get a nice academic dressing-up from research like last month’s Hidden Tribes report, but knowing more about how we don’t get along doesn’t mean suddenly we will. We need a more realistic hope for an answer.

But that kind of realism is in short supply. Hopeless realism is easy enough to find; the sort that says we’re doomed forever to be divided. Hopeful realism, in contrast, is rare. Most of the solutions I see fail by asking us to start at the end instead of the beginning. “Let’s agree to work on agreeing with each other,” as if even that much agreement itself were agreeable to all. Too often it isn’t.

We need the kind of solution that can start doing real good even while some among us are still clawing at other people’s throats. We can’t wait until peace has been restored to begin work on restoring peace.

So let’s be realistic. What kind of solution do we really need, to heal our divided country?

Realistic Solutions

Realistic hope can’t rest on everyone coming to a peace table together; not when we’ve got Nancy Pelosi talking about needful “collateral damage” in her drive to accomplish her party’s goals, and liberal leaders remaining almost uniformly silent in the face of violent protests. Real hope needs a solution that can do good even if one side won’t take part in it.

Those who seek to act in realistic hope must in fact able to absorb hatred directed toward them, without either retaliating in counter-productive anger or crumbling into acquiescence. There’s plenty of hate out there, and I’m not talking about the falsely defined version that’s really disagreement instead.

I’m just being realistic now. Given the world we live in, this is the kind of hope that we have to have, if we’re to have any true hope at all. Of course taken from another angle, what I’m saying may look completely unrealistic. How likely is it that one side, acting unilaterally, can bring America’s warring factions to peace?

Good question. In fact, let’s add that issue to our realistic solution factors. Realistic hope mustn’t only be able to act unilaterally, and it mustn’t just be able to absorb hate. It has to go so far as being able to absorb failure. For failure is certain at some points along the way, and in the main objective it’s always at least a strong possibility.

Only One Hope Is Real

We’re talking, then about unilateral solutions that can absorb both hatred and failure, yet accomplish real good. Good luck with that, right? And this was supposed to be about hope?!

But realistic hope has to rest on realistic conditions. It does no good to pretend impossible answers will do any good, especially answers of the “everybody-come-together” variety.

The fact is, I only know of one solution, one hope, that meets all the requirements I’ve named here for realistic hope. It’s the hope of life and love in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ way can absorb hatred. He prepared His followers for it, for example in John 15:18 and following: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. … The word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’” Jesus’ way doesn’t lash out in response, though, nor does it acquiesce to appease. It holds firmly to truth — see John 18:37, for example — and it loves. It loves unilaterally, in fact. As Jesus taught His followers,

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Jesus’ way of loving gets going long before others even begin caring to care.

His way is built to withstand pressure and sustain love. It can also absorb failure, mostly by understanding success from a wider, longer-term point of view. Success for Christians isn’t just calming a world in crisis; it’s living a life that points to the Kingdom of God, now and throughout eternity.

Kingdom Hope, Realistic Hope

This isn’t theocracy; not the secularist’s scared-up bogeyman of Christians taking over, controlling everyone into submission. It’s a Kingdom that Jesus Himself identified as “not of this world.” As far as His followers live it out in this world, we do so by following His way through His supernatural power. As far as we spread it among others, we do so by example and persuasion, not through unseemly control. And however much we succeed or fail in it, we trust God to carry it the rest of the way to His eternal objectives.

Christians’ hope doesn’t depend on others’ actions, but on the confidence we have in Christ. We can rest on Him, not needing others to fulfill our hopes for us.

So I ask, Does this look like hope to you? There’s no guarantee it will settle down the evening news reports. I’ve even seen love and trust like this frustrate opponents into higher degrees of fury.

Never mind all that. The world’s hope is all fluff and sentiment; Jesus’ kind of hope comes with all the reality, all the substance the Savior of the world Himself carried as He lived among us, died and rose again. It’s also, by the way, the same hope that’s changed the entire world for the better in too many ways to count. I’m not talking overnight change, but real change nonetheless.

So forget all the fluff. Forget the sentimental calls of, “Let’s just please get along!” Forget the false hopes that fail under hatred, pressure or even failure. Need hope? Here’s where you’ll find it.

Tom Gilson is a senior editor with The Stream and the author of Critical Conversations: A Christian Parents’ Guide to Discussing Homosexuality with Teens (Kregel Publications, 2016). Follow him on Twitter: @TomGilsonAuthor.