Real life is an endurance test

Real life–as distinguished from romanticized, sentimentalized life–is largely an endurance test, a “long defeat.” Hope based on empirical evidence of human goodness or human perfectibility is not true hope; it is only optimism or “positive thinking” and cannot stand up to the actual situation. True hope is the hope-against-hope of which Paul speaks in Romans 4:18; that is to say, it is based on a promise from a sphere beyond this one.

Ruledge quotes Tolkien’s we have fought the long defeat