What can we do about resilience?  

We want resilience because post-pandemic life feels strangely fragile. Daniel and his friends, along with Christians in Colossae, lived difficult lives with precarious episodes. Do they have clues about resilience?

A new series by Terry Young

Have you noticed how fragile our post-pandemic society has become? Public services are slower, while prices are shooting through the roof. Maybe a crisis caused it: Brexit? Covid? Prime Ministerial churn? Energy? Ukraine? Maybe a mix of misfortunes triggered it, but we are warier than we were.

School and university life were hit hard and parents worry about their children’s mental health. Congregations have reacted differently, but many are smaller and not quite so active as they were. The situation came home to me with a couple of informal referrals to chat to worried Christian students. I’ve helped reluctant scholars before (one of the first is a head teacher, now), but I sense a different pattern this time.

If I’m right, then this widespread loss of resilience will be affecting people around you, and so I thought I would write a set of blogs on resilience to see if we can find a Christian line.

I’ve just put ‘resilience studies’ into Google Scholar and got nearly three million hits for relevant articles, nearly 20,000 in 2022 alone. Why should there be so much in the literature and so little on show? Is there help beyond what the papers say?

Business writers are interested in resilience because it’s a magical ingredient that drives entrepreneurs and industry leaders so that their taxes and those of their workforces can keep us afloat. There’s a lot of theory there, a little of which I have studied, but I don’t want to start there.

Many see me as resilient: someone who has overcome severe physical impairment to lead a fruitful life. But I don’t want to start there, either.

I want to start writing while I’m in the middle of the puzzle; I also want to write out of the rough and tumble of my Bible reading and meditation. Recently, those have come from Daniel and Colossians, an unusual combo but surprisingly consistent when it comes to resilience. So, let’s start there.

Daniel’s story is one where God’s wisdom beats human brutality. Captured and subjected to deep indignities as a youngster, he cultivates a vibrant faith through which God channels wise counsel into the increasingly elevated circles in which he moves. The brutality never fades – one ruler derides his origins while another sends him to the lions after a fit of forgetfulness – but wisdom wins out. In the end, he sees human misery and plotting mapped out in mind numbing detail, and yet receives a personal promise of safety.

Much later on, Paul’s message to the church at Colossae is not about heroic faith but aims to instil resilience in ordinary Christians who find themselves scoffed at because they lack the spellbinding visions or iron resolve of rigorous religion. Paul writes to pull them away from the extremes – wild experience or wearing endeavour – and closer to a sound faith that works.

In this series, we’ll start by thinking about establishing good routines (Blog 2 on helpful habits; Blog 3 on harmful habits). I’ve separated them because the business of entering into good habits and shedding bad habits is not simply a matter of opposites. Some of us will find one easier than the other. Daniel decided not to eat what the King serves up – avoiding a bad habit – while Paul encourages his readers not to worry about food laws. How are we going to square that? Meanwhile Daniel sets up lifelong habits around prayer, for instance, and prayer is on Paul’s prescription list for his struggling friends.

Will this help us sleep better under stress or ease the anxiety that fills our minds first thing in the morning? And if we are to pray more, what is it most helpful to pray out and pray about? Let’s tease the habits apart and see!

Next, we’ll take the long view (Blog 4: hope). Faith, hope and love form a triplet of virtues that keep appearing in the New Testament and other good things are hooked onto them. We’ll open up this teaching and see what hope has to offer, again for Daniel (who receives spectacular reassurance in hazardous times) and for the church at Colossae. Without hope, there can be no resilience. Somehow, we need a vision, we need glimpses of glory through the fog or sight of a promised land on the other side of what seems an impassable chasm. Daniel and Paul, in very different ways, show us how to develop that.

Our final H is about our minds (Blog 5: headspace). Whether we look at the wisdom Literature of the Old Testament or consider the various strands of New Testament teaching that we summarise as the Christian Mind, there is a lot in Scripture about what happens in the privacy of our own thoughts.

For instance, God really does want Christians to be wiser than those around them, not because they’re smarter but because they tap in. Daniel is red hot on obtaining and targeting wise words. As Christians, we’re nuts about his prophecies and try to use them for the one thing we’re not supposed to: finding out when Jesus will return. Our Jewish friends are saner in putting Daniel in the Writings instead of the Prophets. Our mystical view of wisdom also comes from misusing some New Testament passages, which obscures God’s plainer purpose: wisdom is free to anyone who asks (James 1:5).

How are we to escape a magical view of wisdom to reach a place where our minds are in sync with the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16)? Remarkably, it’s partly about those habits, it’s certainly about reading God’s word and prayer and it’s also about the pursuit of God’s glory in hope.

Does that sound extravagant? Yes and no. It is certainly a transformative set of ideas, but it shouldn’t force you into showy activities. After all, that’s the core message of Colossians: walking with Jesus is unspectacular but spectacularly effective.


Image | Alex Shute | Unsplash

This is part of a five part blog series called What can we do about resilience?

1. What can we do about resilience?

2. Helpful habits and how to develop them 

3. Harmful habits and how to dismantle them 

4. Hope

5. Headspace 

Terry Young is a missionary kid who read science and engineering. After a PhD in lasers, he worked in R&D before becoming a professor, when he taught project management, information systems and e-business, while leading research in healthcare. He set up Datchet Consulting to have fun with both faith and work and worshipped at Baptist churches in Slough for 19 years before moving to the New Forest. 
 

Acknowledgement
Although other pressures prevented Rob Wright from sharing in writing these blogs, discussing them with him helped me restructure my original thinking, for which I am grateful.

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