Look to Future for Hope

This week the Israelites’ complaining reaches a crescendo. A rebellion ensues. Korah and his followers question Moses’ leadership. God sides with Moses and kills the rebels.

On the one hand, I am sympathetic to Korah’s complaints and even his critiques of Moses. He shouts: “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” (Numbers 16) Korah suggests that Moses is no longer as humble as a leader should be. Humility is a necessary quality for effective leadership.

Korah’s frustration is understandable. Last week we learned that his generation will not enter the promised land. Because the people believed the scouts’ negative reports, they are destined to die in the wilderness. Imagine the rebels’ distress. Moses urged them to leave Egypt with the assurance that soon after their rescue from slavery they would be able to build new lives in their own land, the land of Israel.

And now that promise is no more. Their lot is going to be years of wandering. Their lives will be marked by struggle.

Their children will taste the promised land. They will only know the struggles freedom entails.

On the other hand, the rebels’ complaints go too far. Not only do they lose faith in God, and trust in Moses’ leadership, they appear to view Egypt as the promised land. They say, “Is it not enough that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us?” Their statements are divorced from fact. Egypt was not a land of bounty, but instead one of servitude and oppression.

Here is where we discover the rebels’ sin. And, we begin to understand why God’s punishment was so harsh. They saw Egypt, and not Israel, as a land flowing with milk and honey. The rebels mythologize the past. They come to believe that even a tortuous past filled with slavery is better than the promise, and hope, of a better future for their children.

When we mythologize the past, we obscure the future’s promise. Too often we say things like, “Kids today don’t…. When I was young, we knew how to…” When we utter such words, we forget that progress goes hand in hand with change. And change can be unnerving.

Of course, there are problems today. Of course, some of today’s challenges appear solvable when looking back in the rearview mirror. When we hold on to the past too tightly, we forget the problems of yesterday. The 1950’s, for example, did not face the challenges of social media, or the worries about climate change, but they also did not benefit from the welcome successes of women’s rights or enjoy the advancements the computer age has offers.

We can, and should, look to the past for wisdom, but not for hope. Why? Because we cannot go back in time. Instead, we must look to the future with hope. It is in the promise of a better tomorrow for which we must fasten our dreams.

The rabbis suggest we will be asked several questions when we approach heaven. Among these is the question, “Did you have hope in the future?” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

Sure, it is easier to look back. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. But the future is the only direction we can travel. It is all that stands before us. And hope is the only thing that will steer us right.

Look back for wisdom. Look forward for hope.