Scripture on Resilience
2 Corinthians 4:8-10
“We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies”
Micah 7:8
“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.”
John 16:33
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heat; I have overcome the world.”
Romans 8:18
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
2 Corinthians 4:17-18
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Articles on Faith and Resilience
“Role of Faith and Resilience in Recovery from Psychotrauma” – Unalza Niaz
https://pjms.com.pk/issues/aprjun06/pdf/psychotrauma.pdf
“Role of faith & resilience in recovery from traumatic events is a common observation. Recent experience with the earthquake victims in NWFP & AJK clearly demonstrated the positive effects of faith & resilience. Faith in God Almighty was a major factor in strengthening resilience and promoting recovery from traumatic stress disorders. Author suggests partnering media in resilience promotion and capacity building of the disaster affected population and developing psychotherapeutic techniques to enhance the natural resilience and strength in victims of psycho-trauma.”
“Faith, the Intangible Force in Resilience” – Julie K. Hersh
When it comes to resilience, faith plays an important role. In this article, the author presents various testimonial of people who have gone through personal tragedy, but persevered through resilience produced by faith.
“Spiritually: A Facet of Resilience”
https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/spirituality-a-facet-of-resilience/
This article presents the both Christian and scientific view on resilience.
All of the source that I have found points towards the positive correlation between spirituality and resilience. Although my primary intention was to find articles regarding Christian faith and resilience, I was not able to find scholarly articles establishing convincing relationship between the two. However, I was able to find some articles concerning and resilience and spirituality/faith as a whole.
Especially, the study done by Niaz focuses specifically on Islamic faith rather than Christian faith. Although my personal experience points towards resilience produced by Christianity based faith, I believe that this study will be helpful to support the argument that faith produces resilience.
From the research that I have done, it will be extremely difficult to establish the relationship between spirituality and resilience outside of testimony of people who are religious. Also, as expected, it is also extremely difficult (if not impossible) to build a causal relationship between spirituality and resilience. I should be more careful when using the phrase “faith produces resilience” in my autoethnography because this can be source of confusion for some.
I have added the scripture text as part of my blog post because I have seen some research papers that builds relationship between positive outlook on life with resilience. From this, I believe I could assert the following:
If
P = People with positive outlook
S = Religious/Spiritual people
R = Resilence
P -> R
“People with positive outlook tend to be more resilient”
S -> P
“People with religious beliefs tend to have more positive outlook on life”
Therefore:
S -> R
“People with religious belief tend to be more resilient”
But more important than this, I have included the Scripture because “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), and Scripture is the foundational source of word of Christ.
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I agree that you’ll have to be careful in asserting spirituality LEADS to resilience as there are a ton of other possible factors. However, as you note, through use of case studies (published or your own), scholarship, and your own analysis, I do think you could make the case that spirituality is a FACTOR in establishing resilience and explore how it has been a factor in your own resilience and others. You might also want to now consider why your project is important and who you’re writing for. I imagine this project would be a great presentation to a college administration looking to cut funding for all religious/spiritual sites on campus.
DW