Cultivating Resilience in the Modern World

The combination of courage and hope

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

In response to my article last week on masculinity and the importance of striving for greatness, someone on Bluesky asked me a good question, how do we cultivate resilience in our communities and churches? How do we train our young people (and ourselves!) to accept that it’s good to try and fail and keep trying? To some this may feel like an obvious question, since resilience is such a basic life skill. But I think an honest assessment of our current culture shows that we are not particularly resilient; data suggests that this became particularly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. We struggle to deal with loss, challenges, failures, embarrassments, rejections, set-backs, and mental afflictions—all of which are a normal part of life. Of course each of these experiences are difficult, but resilience (and hope and courage) allow us to persevere despite the difficulties. For example, the loss of a favorite pet may be utterly heartbreaking, but through resilience we have the courage and hope to believe that it’s worth it to get a new pet, even though you will have to suffer like that again. It’s worth the risk. I believe resilience is the combination of the virtues of courage and hope, and we cultivate resilience by choosing to enter into risky situations in life for some good in hope that all will be well in God’s providence.