The Search for Resilience
In 2020, almost every nation on earth was confronted with a question: How do we behave during a pandemic? Countries all over the world took their own measures to handle COVID-19, but out of all of the approaches, the Dutch have been particularly interesting. Here are three reasons why.
1. Curling Parents
Last year, a Dutch comedy series introduced the term “curling parents.” Curling is the sport in which skaters with brooms do their utmost to pave the way for a granite stone on an ice floor. “Curling parents,” the show explained, try their best to remove every obstacle in order to help their kids glide through life. This is not only a good joke, but a helpful metaphor.
For the past 70 years, the Netherlands haven’t been hit by a national catastrophe. Three Dutch generations have enjoyed rising socio-economic conditions. This is a blessing, of course, but it isn’t without a price: we as a society are not trained to withstand difficulty anymore. As Dutch trendwatcher Adjiedj Bakas once said in an interview: “I stem from the third world originally. There, you learn what loss is all about. It seems that in this part of the [first] world, we do not want children to fall off their bikes.”
But we all know that even if you can protect your children from falling down seven times, they will fall the eighth. Our children will inevitably experience hardship—and so will we. Trying to protect ourselves from it is simply not enough. It is better to train our resilience.
2. Vulnerability and Resilience
The Dutch think tank WRR published a report entitled “Vulnerability and Resilience” in June of 2020. In it, the authors predict the long-term effects of the coronavirus and encourage the government to “strengthen the national resilience.”
Dutch society is still characterized by the poldermodel: a process of negotiating between many parties. Our House of Commons holds 150 seats, currently divided between 13(!) political parties. This also influenced the Dutch approach to COVID-19. Early on, the government decided to appeal to individual responsibility, encouraging people to hold themselves accountable with their own precautions. This worked pretty well during the first wave, but it simply failed during the second. The Dutch Prime Minister—usually blessed with endless optimism—couldn’t hide his frustrations any longer: Why is it so difficult for people to behave?
Week after the week, the government gave the same advice: “Hang in there!” But what if “hanging in there” is the actual problem? What if we can’t stand any more? What if a nation lacks resilience? That’s exactly the point the WRR makes. In older times, resilience was treated as an ethical or spiritual category. But a secular society—including its government—finds it hard to access moral and spiritual teaching and practices. And, more to the point, if resilience is based on some sort of moral or spiritual foundation, on what is it based?
3. Seasons of Discomfort
During the pandemic, the national mood in the Netherlands has been deeply influenced by the seasons. The first lockdown coincided with the start of the spring. We were afraid of the virus, despite a time of much-needed sunshine waiting right outside. Then came summertime. It caused a feeling of liberation and made us believe that the virus had disappeared. Then, a second series of lockdown measures were taken in early autumn—with the gloom of a very long winter thereafter.
The country felt quite hopeless. Garden centers reported an enormous increase in the amount of Christmas trees sold—in October! In the city, many live in small quarters and are looking for cosiness. Nevertheless, there is a difference between cosiness and resilience. And whatever resilience is, it’s certainly not thinking of Christmas two months in advance.
* * *
We still haven’t found what we aren’t looking for: resilience. In a curling society, resilience is not part of our curriculum anymore. And although a respected council speaks about its necessity, the Dutch government thinks it hardly practicable and people shop till they drop to find some comfort.
So, what is resilience? Where does it come from? And how do we practice it?
Resilience in Nature, History, and Humankind
Resilience is the ability of a person or system to absorb changes and disturbances. It is a quality of being able to adapt to stressful life changes and bouncing back (some people say “bouncing forward”) from hardship. Resilience is a response to tragedy, a crisis, or other life-altering changes, an idea or a power that allows us to move on despite the loss.
Resilience can be discovered in nature. In the natural world, there are many examples of species that are able to find solutions to difficult circumstances. Take, for example, a form of micro-animal called water bears. Water bears can live almost anywhere. They can survive a wide range of temperatures—environments as cold as -200° Celsius and as hot as 300°. They can also survive massive amounts of pressure—up to six times the pressure of the deepest part of the ocean—and a trip to space.
In fact, researchers think that water bears could survive long after humanity is gone: “To our surprise, we found that although nearby supernovas or large asteroid impacts would be catastrophic for people, tardigrades [water bears] could be unaffected,” one Oxford scientist commented.
Isn’t that amazing? These creatures have no need to be afraid of COVID-19 or any virus. They can stand almost anything. As human beings, such an example can teach us humility: one of the world’s tiniest creatures is far more resilient than we are. But the example of the water bears can also stir our imagination and inspire us.
Resilience can also be discovered in history. Many are familiar with Winston Churchill’s famous speech to the House of Commons on May 13th, 1940, when he promised the British people a time of “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” On that very day, he asked the House for their confidence in his government—and he got it unanimously. It’s worth quoting another passage of the speech:
“You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
What made Churchill say these things? John Ramsden, Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary College London, writes that Churchill, though not a conventional Christian, was deeply influenced by Christianity:
“We may ask from where Churchill himself derived his motivation, and just what it was that he believed in, so that he could so effectively communicate with the people he led as war leader and cold warrior. Churchill was, as a man of his time, class, and education, saturated in the Christian tradition, and his speeches were at least as full of references, quotations, and allusions to the Bible, the Prayer Book, and Christian hymns as they were to English literature.”
In other words: it’s impossible to understand Churchill’s narrative without involving its Christian origins.
Second of all, according to Churchill, resilience is born out of a belief in the final victory and an acceptance of the long and hard road towards that goal. It has been observed that—quite ironically—two of Churchill’s current admirers, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and America’s President Donald Trump, both failed to give the same type of speech, let alone gain unanimous support for their COVID policies.
How can we explain the difference? Of course, we live in an era of fragmentation. Even Churchill would have had a grueling time garnering the majority’s support for his decisions, were he still leading today. But my guess is that he would nonetheless speak in similar terms. It’s interesting, and may be worrying, that today’s world leaders do not dare to make such statements any more. “Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.” Why not simply repeat that sentence? Because Johnson, Trump, and other leaders know their audience well. We modern people dislike long and hard roads. We are skeptical about victory—even disagreeing on what it means—and we all try to survive in our own way: whichever way we think is best for us.
Resilience also needs a story. What do we strive for? What sort of victory are we pursuing? What road leads us there? We live in a complex and uncertain world. How can we make sense of the vast amount of information available?
Israeli historian and bestseller Yuval Harari thinks that one of our biggest problems today is the lack of a coherent worldview:
“...The last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.
“In truth, this has been the ideal of western liberal education for centuries, but up till now even many western schools have been rather slack in fulfilling it. Teachers allowed themselves to focus on shoving data while encouraging pupils ‘to think for themselves.’ Due to their fear of authoritarianism, liberal schools had a particular horror of grand narratives. They assumed that as long as we give students lots of data and a modicum of freedom, the students will create their own picture of the world, and even if this generation fails to synthesise all the data into a coherent and meaningful story of the world, there will be plenty of time to construct a good synthesis in the future. We have now run out of time. The decisions we will take in the next few decades will shape the future of life itself, and we can take these decisions based only on our present world view. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.”
I find this a brilliant analysis of our current situation. No wonder many of my secular friends embrace Harari for his storytelling and ability to bring order to the chaos of overwhelming amounts of data. But they tend to overlook how Harari makes a story based on the absence of a story—how he creates a worldview on the premise that there is no coherent worldview.
Is that the best story we can teach ourselves and our children? Is there an alternative?
I believe so.
Resilience as Spiritual Enterprise
Earlier I mentioned the Dutch report “Vulnerability and Resilience.” That title can also describe the plot behind many biblical stories. A society that welcomes Harari as a great storyteller should also access this important historical, cultural, and spiritual source. Let me briefly describe what the Bible can teach us on resilience, not as a purely academic exercise, but as a decisive challenge for a personal spiritual journey.
Here’s a somewhat poetic description of resilience we find in Proverbs 24:16: “...for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”
Here are four principles about resilience that verse offers us:
First, there is no resilience without stumbling or even falling. There is no victory without a long and sometimes painful road. Sooner or later, we—and our kids—will fall off the bike and have to get back up. Unlike a curling parent, God is willing to let us fall. But he always picks us up.
Second, it matters if you are “righteous” or “wicked.” Even if the problems for the righteous are even harder—falling sounds more painful than stumbling—they are promised to rise again. There is no such guarantee that the wicked will find victory.
By the same token, resilience seems endless for the righteous: even when they fall seven times in a row, they’re able to stand up each time. Even when somebody falls seventy-seven times, they rise on every occasion. In this spiritual sense, resilience seems to be abundant.
Fourth, resilience is a gift, a form of grace. A somewhat mysterious external force—like an outstretched hand—is responsible for the rising up of the righteous. We find a clearer idea of this in Psalm 37:23-24: “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” There is a master of the universe and He is the Lord of Resilience. In this picture, resilience is the outstretched hand of God.
Real Christianity acknowledges that there will be trials and there will be change. Read the Old Testament prophets, listen to Jesus. God himself takes responsibility for change. Far from the cultural worldviews that contradict and confuse today, the Christian worldview is coherent in the sense that it teaches us to diligently follow Christ rather than maintain whichever earthly status quo we personally enjoy. It is not a coping mechanism; it equips us to handle failure. When we fall, we will never stay down. There is always an outstretched arm.
We can connect the poetic idea of a godly outstretched arm with one person in history: Christ Himself. In Jesus, we learn what vulnerability and resilience mean to God.
Remember the story of the water bears. You would expect a Creator God to be more resilient than this steadfast little creature. Nevertheless, Christians believe that Jesus—God incarnate—suffered the death penalty. Two of the things virtually no one doubts about Jesus’s history is that he died on a cross and was buried afterwards. But there would never be a Christian faith if that was it. Proverbs 24 and Psalm 37 would be lies: for this most righteous, there would have been no outstretched hand to uphold him—unless the strange and seemingly unbelievable resurrection story is resilience in its utter form. Although Jesus fell by our hands, he rose again by the hand of the Father. Because of Jesus, God makes firm the steps of everyone who delights in him.
This belief made the early Christians astonishingly resilient people. Even Roman soldiers, highly praised for their level of fortitude, were surprised by the courage of ordinary Christians in all circumstances, even in facing death.
The apostle Paul spent the last part of his life reflecting on the meaning of the resurrection. This is what he said in a nutshell: believing in Christ makes you more resilient than anything else. Although the road can be long and hard, the outcome is certain. God will uphold you. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
You do not learn this resilience from a comedy series. You do not learn it in a council report. You do not learn it from the mouths of prime ministers or presidents. You learn it in the gospel. Everybody can be touched by it. And when that happens, it can be the start of an amazing spiritual adventure. Though you may stumble many times, you will not fall. For He upholds you with His hand.
* * *