Is Redemption Redeeming?

How can you move past adversity and understand what comes next? The answer to that question is not as obvious or simplistic as you may think.

We must all grapple with this question at some point in our lives, given that we cannot be completely free of adversity, failure, and suffering. Thinkers in religion and philosophy have also pondered this question for thousands of years.

Looking for Benefits of Adversity

At least in the United States, many people respond to adversity by quickly looking for benefits or opportunities for growth. This is reflected in our enthusiasm for superhero movies, where characters who have experienced different types of adversity subsequently gain superhero powers. You can even see it in our experience with COVID-19, where many people have highlighted and explored the ways in which people can grow and become stronger or more successful as a result of the pandemic.

Research suggests that this focus on seeking the benefits of adversity reflects a "redemption" narrative—the cultural belief that good things can come out of bad events. It's a powerful idea that people in the United States frequently invoke to confront and manage the impact of adversity. Endorsing such a story provides a comforting lens for making sense of one's life (“we’re always growing and learning") as well as of the past (e.g., "the arc of history bends towards justice").

Civil War in Sri Lanka

Growing up in the midst of civil war and insurrection in Sri Lanka during the '80s and '90s, however, I viewed the idea that adversity being accompanied by benefits with some suspicion.

The Sinhalese-majority Sri Lankan Army was fighting Tamil separatists seeking an independent homeland in the north and east of the country, while Marxist revolutionaries simultaneously battled to overthrow the government in the south. Our school van would routinely drive by the bodies of young men and women executed for being on the “wrong side” of the conflict. Paying attention to the signs of a possible bomb attack was a normal part of daily life.

My childhood left me questioning easy explanations for Sri Lanka’s complex and violent past suffering and adversity, in which there were no clear “good guys,” and many innocent people had their lives snatched away.

While I have now lived in the United States for 21 years, these childhood experiences came flooding back while reading Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which was awarded this year’s Booker Prize. A key lesson of Karunatilaka’s book is that there is no simple story to explain the suffering of Sri Lanka’s people. Indeed, at the beginning of the novel, the lead character Malinda Kabalana (a.k.a. Maali Almeida) has already been killed by the government and is stuck in a processing office in a purgatory described as “Just Like Here But Worse.”

Karunatilika’s darkly comic (and at times even nihilistic) depiction of his characters and the suffering they’ve experienced contrasts sharply with how many Americans attempt to move past adversity. But which is better? While the redemption narrative favored here is both compelling and comforting to us, are such beliefs helpful for our well-being? Are they helpful for facing up to and confronting suffering in our society?

I’m not so sure. For example, my research has examined people's beliefs about growth following adversity. Such beliefs do not correspond to meaningful change in ourselves and are associated with poorer mental health. This means that such beliefs may reflect a failed attempt to cope with adversity. In other words, many Americans try to find redemption too quickly.

Similarly, redemption provides an overtly simplistic lens to understanding societal progress (e.g., while there has been progress in race relations since the 19th century, real challenges remain, as highlighted by the BLM movement) and may not reflect the reality for marginalized communities in the United States. Furthermore, our desire to see growth in our suffering can make us more willing to tolerate injustices in the world. For example, the psychologists Annelie Harvey and Laura Blackie found that people believe that victims of severe adversity are more likely to grow from their experience, in part because such beliefs help reinforce the belief that the world is a just place.

Challenging Redemption Narratives

In short, believing in simple stories of redemption caricatures the hard work of making sense of and moving past adversity (as depicted in Almeida’s struggle to bring justice to his killers from the afterlife), doesn’t help with our mental health, and may even motivate us to accept and justify existing inequalities in our society. However, given the ubiquity of such narratives in our culture, can we challenge them in our own lives?

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Given that redemption is such a central theme of American culture, acknowledging and moving past it will not be an easy task. However, one thing we can do is reflect on our personal worldview and challenge our implicit beliefs about the value of adversity, which is a good start. Reflecting on our beliefs with intellectual humility can enable us to mindfully resist the urge to use a simplistic framing for the complex reactions we have to adversity and suffering. For example, we could confront our belief that people dealing with adversity can benefit from it with the following thought experience—if adversity is, in fact, good for you, would you willingly choose to experience it?

Challenging this simplistic narrative of “quick and easy” redemption doesn't mean we need to adopt an overtly pessimistic attitude to suffering. One lesson I learned from my research (and perhaps from growing up in Sri Lanka) is that adopting a more realistic perspective on adversity—which includes acceptance of both positive and negative changes—can help us better understand the lessons that adversity may provide us, without the unreasonable expectation that all adversity should provide us with lessons or benefits. As the psychologists Daryl and Sara Van Tongeren write in The Courage to Suffer, engaging with adversity as a reality of human existence may open the path to meaningful change.

Similarly, the philosopher Kieran Setiya writes in Life Is Hard of the importance of “hoping well”—of attending to the realistic possibilities of flourishing in the wake of adversity without falling prey to either simplistic stories of redemption or despair. Such a measured response to adversity may also have the effect of creating a world where more people have the opportunity to lead meaningful lives free from unwarranted adversity. Indeed, in A Commonwealth of Hope, the political philosopher Michael Lamb writes that such hope is needed to help us confront the many challenges we face in today’s world.

Perhaps this is the real value of rejecting simple stories of redemption—doing so allows us to move on from adversity in a way that is ultimately beneficial to us and society. To echo Karunatilaka’s acceptance speech at the Booker Prize ceremony, confronting adversity in an honest manner is perhaps the first step to creating a better world unburdened by pointless suffering.