Resilience

“He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.” – Proverbs 29:1

“What people need, it seems, is not a stress-free life, but the framework to treat stress well; to use it as a stimulus for growth, rather than buckling under it.” – Kirsten Burkett, Resilience: A Spiritual Project

One of the hardest things to teach our children is how to receive reproof without becoming defensive. There’s some variation depending on age and personality, but nearly always the response to a statement like “what you did was wrong” is some version of, “but last time this happened” or “they were wrong too.” Last week I found myself trying to explain to the kids what being “defensive” means: it’s like holding up a shield so that any negative feedback bounces off. That’s our natural instinct. But sometimes, you need to put the shield down and receive the negative thing; you need to try to listen, because that is how you grow. 

It occurs to me that this is about having a kind of resilience, the ability to bounce back from something bad. Indeed, this verse uses the language of elasticity: to stiffen ourselves against reproof is to become dangerously brittle. There may come a day when we snap. But receiving reproof is learning to be flexible, to have resilience, so that by implication we may heal and grow. 

“Resilience” has become somewhat of a buzz-word in popular psychology, but while resilience research centers on a lot of the same concepts that we see in Christian spirituality—adversity leading to strength, importance of meaning and purpose, benefits of hope and optimism—Christianity offers deeper, more centered answers, I think. Christianity says that resilience is possible because you are deeply loved. When my children know that reproof comes from a parent who loves them in a deep and even sacrificial way, they are able to lower their shields because they know that whatever comes their way will ultimately not shatter their sense of self, their identity as a beloved child. Secondly, resilience is possible because Christianity says that suffering is not all bad. Our response to adverse events depends not so much on the event itself as on our belief about that event—and if we believe that God can use even suffering to build our faith and purify our hope, then our response to it will be different.

We need resilience these days—spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical resilience. May we learn how to regroup in the face of unexpected challenges, may we never lose our hope and joy, may we not be afraid to walk through suffering, because we are deeply centered in a God who loves us and has called us to this moment we are in.