The End of the Story:

'But in addition to despair and optimism, there is another way to read this story. The Christian Gospel calls us neither to despair nor to deny; it calls us to hope. Richard John Neuhaus explains the difference between hope and optimism this way: "Optimism is a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair".'