On Monday night First Lady Michelle Obama was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and spoke regrettably about hope. Hope is not a new topic for the Obamas. President Barack Obama campaigned on hope for his 2008 election bid, and Michelle referred to that nostalgically in the CBS interview Monday evening. In contrast to her husband’s sentiments, she lamented that now “we are feeling what not having hope is like.” She referred to hope as “a necessary concept.”
Hope, however, is not a feeling, and it is not a concept. Hope, as the Christian tradition has expressed it for centuries, is a virtue. In fact, it is one of the three theological virtues that embody our relationship with God. It is that virtue through which we desire and even anticipate from God the gift of eternal life and the grace necessary to obtain it. Through the virtue of hope we surrender ourselves to God, recognizing that it is not our own strength but the strength of God that will ultimately see us through to a life of human flourishing.
Michelle Obama asked, rhetorically, “What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?” But under her husband’s presidency, more than 8 million unborn children have been denied the gift of hope and the gift of life, an established fact that Obama considers part of his legacy in the promotion of “reproductive rights.” If Michelle Obama feels like she does not possess hope, it has much more to do with her husband, and absolutely nothing to do with God.
