Growing in the Theological Virtues – Hope: Avoiding Despair and Presumption

As we’ve seen in this series, spiritual growth requires us to grow in the theological virtues, including the theological virtue of hope, which means to trust God. The alternative to hope is to fall into either despair or presumption. Despair robs the joy out of life. Presumption turns our trust into exploitation.

The Error of Despair

The error of despair is the belief that we cannot reach Heaven. Despair may take the form of feeling so guilty for a sin or for your sinfulness in general that you believe God cannot or will not forgive you. This belief is really a failure to trust in God’s promise of mercy. God promises over and over again in Sacred Scripture that he is quick to forgive our sins if we are sorry for them. The only sin that cannot be forgiven – what Jesus calls “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” – is the refusal of God’s mercy and grace. God will not force himself on us. We need to open ourselves to him first. But if we seek his forgiveness and confess our sins, God will forgive us. The virtue of hope leads us to trust in that mercy.

Another form of despair is the general belief that you are not worthy of God’s love. This kind of despair doesn’t come about because of sin, but often because of a lack of love and affirmation in one’s life from the people that matter most (parents, close friends, etc.). On the surface this form of despair seems like a lack of self esteem. It’s an inability to see oneself as lovable. But in reality it is also a failure to trust in God’s unfailing, unconditional love. People suffering from this form of despair need to apply the old “God don’t make no junk” principle. God has made everybody capable of loving and being loved precisely because he calls every human person to love him and to be loved by him – and to love each other as members of His Family. And just because fellow human beings fail in their mission to love, we can’t give up on ours.

Spiritual growth in the virtue of hope demands that we combat despair in all of its little forms in our hearts.

The Error of Presumption

The other extreme of a lack of hope is presumption. Presumption is the attitude that God will save my soul no matter what I do. The sin of presumption perverts the virtue of hope and turns it into exploitation of God’s mercy. It also takes two forms. One form of presumption is spiritual sloth. It assumes that no spiritual effort is necessary to get to Heaven. God will send us all to Heaven anyway, so why bother putting forth any effort? This error assumes first of all that the only goal of spiritual growth is to slide into Heaven. It misses the fact that God wants us to grow in the natural virtues and the theological virtues, and to grow in our relationship with him. This error also misses the fact that God always invites us to participate in his divine life. He also always respects our freedom. So he wants our effort to be part of our salvation. No, we cannot earn our way to Heaven – a popular misconception of Catholic theology. Only God’s grace can get us to Heaven. But grace is a relationship and God wants that relationship to be a two-way love. Our effort is a necessary part of the relationship. The theological virtues are given to us as a free gift of grace at our baptism, but they grow as we exercise them.

The other form of presumption is the assumption that God will forgive our sin so we can do whatever we want. Sometimes this means actually thinking, “It’s OK if I do this. God will forgive me.” Other times we may just get into the habit of sinning and not fight it because we assume that God will forgive us. Either way we are taking advantage of God’s mercy. More to the point, we’re playing games with God. But God doesn’t play games. He can’t be fooled or taken advantage of. He wants true trust.

And we are the ones who miss out when we fail to trust. If we get stuck in these errors, our growth in all of the theological virtues suffers. That’s why spiritual growth and conversion need to include growth in the virtue of true hope and combatting despair and presumption whenever they rear their ugly heads.

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