“The message is clear: history belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being. This is not simply a religious statement. It is also true of Communists or capitalists or anarchists as it is of Christians. The future belongs to whoever can envision a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable.
This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs.
The future is not closed. There are fields of forces whose actions are somewhat predictable. But how they will interact is not. Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. These shapers of the future are the intercessors, who call out of the future the longed-for new present. In the New Testament, the name and texture and aura of that future is God’s domination-free order, the reign of God…
Walter Wink
Afterthought: This is exactly why knowing that we evolve is critical. Knowing that we evolve means knowing what kind of future should be, can be, and eventually will be, and moving up the schedule.
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