The Basis of Our Hope

Several generations have enjoyed Frank Capra’s captivating film Lost Horizon, which premiered in San Francisco, California, on March 2, 1937.

Based on James Hilton’s 1933 novel by the same name, the film tells the story of an airplane that runs out of fuel, eventually crashing into the snow-covered Himalayan Mountains. The pilot dies in the crash, but the few survivors are pulled from the wreckage and escorted by a group of Tibetans to the paradisiac valley of Shangri-la.

Isolated from the outside world, the inhabitants grow in love and wisdom, living an almost perfect life of enduring harmony and joy.

The fantasy of Shangri-la highlights two basic values of human existence. One is the awareness that personal values and human relations are much more important than fleeting material possessions. As suggested by Martin Buber, while the world of experience is based on the words I and It, the world of relationships is grounded in the words I and Thou.8 Thus, the materialistic stress of I and things should be balanced by an emphasis on I and You. After all, life finds its truest meaning in our relationships with God and others (Matthew 22:36–40). The second basic value underscored by the film is the deep human longing for a better world. According to Emil Brunner, “What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of human life.

Take oxygen away and death occurs through suffocation, take hope away and humanity is constricted through lack of breath; despair supervenes, spelling the paralysis of intellectual and spiritual powers by a feeling of the senselessness and purposelessness of existence.”9 In contrast to the fictional Shangri-la of Lost Horizon, our hope of eternal life does “not follow cunningly devised fables” (2 Peter 1:16).

It is based on God’s reliable promise of a perfect world with no more tears, pain, or death (Revelation 21:1–5). This promise gives meaning and purpose to our present life and assures us that all our loved ones who have died in Christ will finally be raised from the dead to inherit eternal life. What a glorious hope we have!