“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is the worth of hope? That’s a trickier question to answer than it might appear at first glance. As a follower of Jesus, I would argue that hope gives our lives purpose and meaning and even direction. Hope gives us something to live toward. It brings the promise of a future that will be better than the present. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be hope at all; it would be dread. Yet this understanding of the nature – and more, the worthwhileness – of hope requires a certain view of the world to make sense. Absent that view, hope can seem like little more than foolish wishful thinking that will only serve to distract a person from what is really real, or of doing the hard work necessary to make our future plans a reality on our own. Hope, you see, requires us to surrender ourselves to someone higher and more powerful than we are; someone who knows and controls the future in a way we cannot. At a little more than four episodes in, this grimmer view of hope lies at the heart of the second prequel series to the hit series, Yellowstone, and the follow-up to the immensely popular first prequel series, 1883, called 1923. Today, let’s talk about how the series has been at the halfway mark, and why its worldview isn’t one worth adopting for ourselves.

As with most non-Marvel streaming series, I’m a little late to the party on this one, but a little late is often better than never (at least it seems to be for this series so far), so we’ll plow forward all the same. Halfway through the series, 1923 has been every bit as good as 1883 was. I still haven’t watched but part of the first episode of Yellowstone. I could try to say I’m just watching everything in the Yellowstone universe in chronological order, but the truth is I didn’t have access to Yellowstone when it premiered and so never got started on watching it in the first place. And, when we did start it, the first episode was so slow we never got through it. I’ve been told several times you have to give it a few episodes and then it will have you obsessively hooked, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

1923 is as good as 1883 was, but it also shares its incredibly grim, dark, rather hopeless view of the world. The acting and production values are again outstanding, but the level of violence is equal in every way. This is not a series for kids at all, and it’s really not a series for the squeamish or faint of heart.

The series tells the story of the next generation of the Dutton family after James and Margaret made it as far as Montana before Elsa died from an infection stemming from getting shot by an arrow in an Indian ambush that was ultimately rooted in a misunderstanding. James acquired all the land around where she died, and that became the Yellowstone Ranch.

Now, if you haven’t watched any of the original Yellowstone series, it can be a little tough to follow the characters. The series can fairly well stand on its own two feet, but a little context helps things make a bit more sense. It would be worth your time to study a Dutton family tree like this one. Here’s a quick primer, though, to save you some time.

The original founders of the Yellowstone Ranch in 1883 were James and Margaret Dutton. They had three children. Elsa (whose haunting narrations by actress Isabel May are just as fantastic as they were in 1883), the oldest died as I just mentioned a second ago. The only other child we meet in 1883 is John. He is still living at the beginning of the series, is married to Emma, and they have one son that we know about, Jack, who marries Elizabeth. Apparently Jack has a brother, John Jr., who is the father of John III, Kevin Costner’s character in the original series, but we have yet to meet him. There is also a third son, Spencer, born after the events of 1883, who married Alexandra. In 1923, James and Margaret have both died and James’ brother, Jacob (Harrison Ford), along with his wife, Cara (Helen Mirren), have come to manage the ranch in their absence.

The major conflict for the series so far is between the Duttons and Banner Creighton, a Scottish immigrant whose family raises sheep which they have a tendency to graze on land that isn’t theirs. After a violent confrontation in which Jacob exercises a bit of frontier justice on Banner and his crew after they attacked his great nephew while grazing illegally on Yellowstone land, Banner survives and declares war on the Duttons. Later, funded by Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), a local businessman who wants the Yellowstone land so he can extract all the natural resources from it, he and his hired guns ambush the Duttons as they are riding back to the ranch from town killing John, wounding Jack and Elizabeth, and grievously wounding Jacob. John’s wife, Emma, later kills herself in her grief over losing her husband.

Like I said: grim and violent.

It is in the aftermath of this attack in episode 4 that we are given three bits of dialogue that caught my attention and prompted this mid-series review. The morning after the attack, while cleaning up the blood in the kitchen from the effort to treat the wounded from the night before, Cara has a conversation with Zane, the head cowboy on the ranch.

Talking about Jacob, Cara says, “He survived the night. That’s a start. Now we just have to focus on the next night.”

After a thoughtful pause, Zane responds, “Hope is a dangerous thing, ma’am. It tricks your mind into seeing this world that ain’t ever coming true. It’s best to say goodbye to him while you still can.”

“No room for miracles in your world, I see,” replies Cara.

“There’s room for ’em, ma’am. I just never seen anyone wish one up.”

Later, after she has had a conversation with Jacob who is very weak, but still alive, Cara goes out into the yard around the massive ranch house and has a talk with God. Her character has referenced her Catholic faith a few times, but this is the first time we see her actually praying. The prayer goes like this: “I refuse to hope. I refuse it. You brought him back. I will believe in it. I will trust it.”

In other words, she’ll take what God has given her, but she won’t expect more than that. After the much grimmer, intentionally hopeless outlook expressed by Zane, Cara’s faith here is a bit of a welcome surprise. Yet, reflecting on it just a bit further, her outlook is just as hopeless as his. There is faith, yes, but not hope. Instead, lying at the root of her prayer is a trust more in what she can do with what is before her than in anything or anyone else. She’ll receive gratefully the gifts God chooses to give her, but she won’t go looking or hoping for them.

Doubling down on all of this is a narration from Elsa a few moments later. “There are only three answers to a prayer: ‘Yes,’ ‘not yet,’ and ‘I have something else in mind for you.’ Man’s great challenge is trusting ‘not yet’ or ‘something else,’ and avoiding the foolish notion of hope; wishing at nothing that your unanswered prayers are granted. Hope is the surrender of authority to your fate, and trusting it to the whims of the wind. My family does not hope. We fight for what we believe until we have it, or we are destroyed by the pursuit.”

In the context of the moment, I know this is supposed to sound like a profound reflection on the embrace of a hard realism over and often fruitless hope, but a little bit of thought shows it to be something entirely more negative than that. At least, it is something entirely more negative from the standpoint of the Christian worldview. The key line there is right in the middle: “Hope is the surrender of authority to your fate, and trusting it to the whims of the wind.”

This is only profound insomuch as it is a profound rejection of traditional theism in favor of an embrace of a position that is perhaps best described as a radical autonomy. This is a view of the world that seeks to grab as much from life as is possible before the world strikes back. There may be a higher power of some sort in this world, but He is not to be relied on for anything more than the occasional surprise that should be received gratefully, but not factored into any of our decision-making processes.

What all of this betrays is what can only be seen as creator Tyler Sheridan’s profoundly anti-Christian worldview. He seems to see the world through a rather dark and depressing lens, focusing his attention on the brokenness and despair rife within it rather than the blessings and reasons for hope God gives us. And perhaps he is not anti-Christian in his outlook, but he seems to have at the very least been burned very badly by the church and still has a great deal of hard feelings toward it.

This all comes out further in the series in a subplot that I have yet to figure out how it is going to relate to the main story. While following the trials of the Dutton family, we have also been given a look into the tribulations of a group of Crow Indian girls being essentially held captive at a Catholic school whose ostensible purpose is to turn them from wild, godless heathens into good, Christian, properly cultivated and cultured frontier wives. The naked, violent racism and disdain the nuns and priests have for the girls is hard to stomach. They are beaten and abused mercilessly for the smallest infractions. The abuse is physical, emotional, and even sexual. The viewers are made to feel the justified, seething hatred the Crow girls have for their captors. Any church that would sanction, much less allow such treatment is evil and should be disposed of with prejudice. If there is even the slightest grain of truth to this part of the story, the church should repent of it in sackcloth and ashes. In the context of the story at least so far, this whole plot adds to the sense of the irrelevance and even the harm of the church and Christianity generally to frontier living. It adds to the theme of the irrelevance of hope.

So, where does all of this land for us? Well, here’s the thing: If there is no God like we find described in the pages of the Scriptures, and if the God who may exist is more like the god of the deists such that religion really is little more than a crutch for the weak or a convenience for the wealthy, then the whole show makes sense. It’s grim, dark perspective is right, however depressing it may be.

But you see, that isn’t the God we find revealed in the pages of the Scriptures. There we find a God who is loving and kind and good. His heart breaks with ours at the brokenness of sin in His world. He mourns with those who mourn and comforts those who are hurting. He acts to see justice served on those who have violated His character. His vengeance will not come on our timetable, but it will be thorough and complete when it does come. He has promised as much, and He always keeps His promises. In Him we can have hope and trust that this hope will not disappoint us. It will not disappoint us because He has given us a downpayment on the incredible future He has promised by sending His Holy Spirit to take up residence in our hearts in order that we might be so filled with the love of God that it pours from us and positively affects the lives of the people around us. In other words, He fills us with His Spirit and His love and makes us little bastions of His kingdom on earth. In this way, we not only experience, but actively demonstrate the worthwhileness of hope by our Christ-reflecting lives.

Life is short and hard. The time we walk to and fro on this earth is barely a blip on the radar of the history of the universe. We suffer much – some of our own making and some because of the choices of the people around us – during this time. It is frightfully easy to let our outlook on life become totally colored by the dreariness of sin and give into a hopeless pessimism that sees life as nothing good at any point. Without hope – genuine hope – the world is indeed a grim place. But the good news is that in Christ, we have hope. We have this incredible hope in the resurrection that this life and all its troubles are not the sum of our stories. There is more. And it is good. We can face the difficulties, the trials, the tribulations, the persecutions, the painful setbacks we experience here and now with joy in our hearts because we know they will not last forever. They will not be the final statement on life. God has made that, and His word is good.

Go and watch 1923. If you are at all a fan of the genre, it is an excellent entry into it. But don’t get sucked into the worldview it offers. Use it as a reminder of the brokenness of the world, the hopelessness of those living apart from Christ, and the absolute necessity of the church’s accomplishing her mission. 1923 is a reflection of where our culture is right now. Given that, our mission is more important than ever before. Let’s get to it.