When did we start believing that resilience was simply about toughening up? Is “grit” really the answer, or could we offer something deeper, something richer?
Having recently read Angela Tilby’s Church Times column Religion has resources to develop ‘grit’, I was left wondering – whilst religion does indeed have resources to develop “grit,” should we embrace it? I think probably not, at least not as envisaged.
The early church had ample “religious resources” but history warns us that misapplying them leads to trouble. Pelagianism, the belief that salvation is earned through sheer effort, was essentially a theology of grit. But the gospel tells a different story. How we apply our religious resources is consequential.
The column’s concern for children’s poor mental health is admirable, and some compelling reasons for the crisis are offered: pandemic-related interrupted education, parental detachment, and the fact that so many experience human connection primarily online.
These are complex issues. However, rather than tackling them directly, we’re presented with the absence of grit – a concept that has been significantly critiqued in recent years.
This critique serves as a necessary corrective to the TED Talk grit enthusiasm and centres around five concerns:
- Victim blaming
- Neglecting to account for complex systemic factors
- Limited predictive power—research suggests grit is not the panacea it was promised to be
- An impoverished view of human emotions
- A shifting burden of responsibility – from structural and organisational safeguards (e.g., Health & Safety at Work Act 1974) to an increasing expectation that individuals must independently manage their own resilience and wellbeing.
Beyond this, we are offered an additional villain: cultural secularism. Supposedly, secularism has created a loss of perspective by medicalising “ordinary suffering” and largely erased the religious instinct that life is a struggle. Yet, do our youth really need a religious tradition to teach them life is difficult? Must they ‘snap out of it’ to regain their self-respect?
Apparently, “people from poorer backgrounds” too easily absorb the conviction that the odds are stacked against them, limiting their ability to develop grit. But resilience does not come merely from self-respect; it must be rooted in something deeper – hope.
More Love, Less Grit.
Resilience is not simply a matter of endurance. Hope is not just a virtue but a gift, grounded in a love that does not demand we prove ourselves worthy.
For a generation growing up in a “truly scary place”, perhaps we need more than calls for grit. We need love – the kind of love that does not demand endurance but offers belonging – one that proclaims justice for the weak and oppressed and provides a foretaste of a kingdom not of this world.
What if we started there?