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The Gospel Makes Us Antifragile
In his book Antifragile, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb observes that some objects are naturally fragile, like glass or fine china, and some are naturally resilient, like rubber or Tupperware. But there’s another category he labels “antifragile.” Just as the immune system becomes stronger when exposed to the normal circulation of viruses and bacteria, so some objects become better under stress.
What Taleb describes is similar to what Paul writes about in Romans 5: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (vv. 3–4). Suffering is the stress, and a persevering character full of hope is a description of Spirit-filled antifragility.
If you’re anything like me, you deeply sense your need for such a virtue, particularly today. I minister to people in New York, and the city landscape is wonderful and full of opportunities, but it’s also complex, pressurized, and prone to chewing people up and spitting them out. And this is to say nothing of all the universal stresses and strains of life, relationships, jobs, the upcoming election cycle, and (for me) ministry.
How can we ensure the challenges we face strengthen us and don’t hollow us out? The key, according to Taleb, is “repeated positive engagement with stressors and challenges to learn, adapt, and survive” (emphasis mine). In Romans 5, Paul outlines how the gospel gives us unique security as we reflect on our past, present, and future. This reframes our challenges positively so the stress and suffering will produce in us hopeful, antifragile perseverance.
Our Past: We Have Peace with God
How do you get past your past?
I’m old enough to remember vinyl records, and it’s good to see they’ve made a comeback. Sometimes an old record would get scratched. The scratch would make the record jump, and then it would fail to progress through the song; instead, it would keep skipping and repeating that section. Similarly, things in our past can be like scratches on which our memories get stuck; we feel like we can’t move on. It may be something done to us, a wound as yet unhealed. Or it may be a hurt we’ve inflicted on another. Most of us have a complex mix of the two because we’re both sinners and sinned against.
The gospel gives us unique security as we reflect on our past, present, and future.
Paul reminds us, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). God’s peace doesn’t trivialize sin. After all, sin is so serious that Jesus had to die for it. But it does give us peace in the face of sin. Preaching at Westminster Chapel in London, Martyn Lloyd-Jones reportedly said that at the cross, “our sins have been thrown away into the sea of God’s forgetfulness.”
When we grasp this truth, God’s peace in Christ fills in the scratch (whether it’s our sins we confess to God or a hurt we’re struggling to forgive) so we need not get stuck on the past.
Our Present: We Stand in Grace
In case we need to be reminded, Jesus graciously tells us, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33, NIV). How do we face such troubles and not become overwhelmed? By knowing we’re justified in Christ. When the Father looks at those who trust in him, he sees us not only as forgiven but also as clothed in Christ’s righteousness. He loves us in the same way he loves his perfect Son. This is the “grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2). Notice we “stand” in this reality; it’s a settled and unchanging state of God’s unmerited favor toward us.
When we feel hard-pressed, God’s grace fills us up and stops us from being crushed. When we’re perplexed by the tangled maze of life, his grace stops us from despairing. When we’re wronged, it gives us the emotional resources to forgive. When we’re criticized, it enables us to turn away from defensiveness, filter through the emotion, find the kernel of truth in what’s said, and (where appropriate) apologize.
Our Future: We Boast in God’s Glory
The word “boast” has an almost exclusively negative connotation for us, but Paul uses it positively. Think of a parent saying to a child, “I’m proud of you. Well done!” That’s how Paul uses the word in Romans 5:2: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God” (NIV). That’s the hopeful posture we can have toward the future.
God’s peace doesn’t trivialize sin. After all, sin is so serious that Jesus had to die for it.
It’s easy to be anxious about the future, particularly in a culture where hope is in short supply. But let the gospel argue with your anxieties as Paul does in verses 6–10. If you trust in Christ, God has given you what’s most precious to him, even his only Son—and this while you were his enemy. How much more now, as a beloved child, will God give you anything and everything for your good. You can have complete confidence that no matter what the future holds, it’ll be for your blessing.
Hopeful in Suffering
For those justified in Christ, our past is marked by peace, our present by grace, and our future by hope. What perfect security we enjoy. Nothing past, present, or future can work against us. No stress or challenge is outside God’s sovereign grace.
To the extent we grasp this and it starts to shape us, we’ll become antifragile: persevering and hope-filled. Stressors and suffering will come our way, that much is sure, but as William Cowper’s great hymn “God Moves In a Mysterious Way” puts it,
His purposes will ripen fast,
unfolding every hour;
the bud may have a bitter taste,
but sweet will be the flower.
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