“Grace is not weakness but resolve.”

The power of embracing grace in this moment.

We are living in contentious times. In such times, we often face the question: how should we respond? This has been the central question of many essays in The Healthiest Goldfish over the past year. It is a question which implies others: when should we speak out, intervene? When should we accept disruptive change as, potentially, beneficial, and when is it just disruption for its own sake? When does enforcement of policies we dislike—but which are, ultimately, legitimate expressions of the popular will—tip into injustice that demands a response? How should we ensure our responses are both prudent and effective in this moment? How do we maintain our moral integrity in a time that incentivizes expedience and cynicism? How do we address assaults on small-l liberalism without becoming illiberal ourselves?

As I have wrestled with these questions, I have found myself turning to the concept of grace. What is grace? It has many definitions, including “mercy, pardon,” “benevolence, goodwill,” and “ease and fluidity of movement or manner.” It also has a theological resonance, a perspective from which Andrew Sullivan wrote when he described grace as:

“…those precious, rare times when exactly what you were expecting gives way to something utterly different, when patterns of thought and behavior we have grown accustomed to and at times despaired of, suddenly cede to something new and marvelous. It may be the moment when a warrior unexpectedly lays down his weapon, when the sternest disciplinarian breaks into a smile, when an ideologue admits error, when a criminal seeks forgiveness, or when an addict hits bottom and finally sees a future. Grace is the proof that hope is not groundless. “

Grace, in this conception, is in many ways the opposite of what can seem like the reigning spirit of this era—the spirit of cruelty, of dominance, of winning at all costs even when this means shattering norms and upending lives. Given this, it is possible for an embrace of grace to seem like weakness in this moment, a laying down of arms during a battle that is still raging and which threatens much we hold dear. Yet grace is more akin, I think, to what New Yorker Editor David Remnick recently wrote, “Grace is not weakness but resolve.” Grace, if properly applied, can help shore up our efforts, making us stronger in the face of challenge, helping guide us through a difficult time for our field.

What are some advantages of having grace as our orientation in this moment?

Grace sustains long-term resolve, fortifying our endurance. To aspire to grace is to aspire to the capacity to maintain our equilibrium no matter what happens. It is worth noting that we often hear grace spoken of in the context of “grace under pressure.” We can learn such grace by starting small, trying to model grace when we encounter minor inconveniences or setbacks. We can then move on to showing grace at more challenging times. The more we do so, the more confident we can be that grace will always be accessible, so we will be able to function effectively in pursuit of our mission, come what may.

Grace helps us preserve our sense of moral clarity. We are in a moment of muddy waters, when few causes and movements have remained fully immune to the illiberal tendencies that have influenced so much of our politics and culture. It is also true that, working pragmatically towards a vision of better health for all means making compromises and accepting tradeoffs which can seem like diversions from our core purpose, even as they remain essential to moving our mission forward. In this moment, it is easy to forget ourselves, to lose sight of where we stand and why. Grace helps us to retain a sense of who we are that can sustain our efforts and ensure that all we do supports the greater good of a healthier world.

Grace enables coalition-building, helping us to bring others into the public health fold. This is because grace is not just about enabling action—it is a way of action, a way of being in the world. There are many ways of acting in the policy space. There are ways of implementing good policies with a lack of grace, in a manner that turns people away. And there are ways of pursuing difficult policies with a sense of grace, in a manner that cultivates understanding if not cooperation.

For example, it is possible to pursue stronger enforcement of US immigration law, and even a deportation policy, in a way that, to the extent possible, leans into grace, that conveys a sense that the government will take every step it can to minimize the suffering such a policy must necessarily cause. That the federal administration has chosen to forgo such an approach is a tragedy for the individuals and communities affected, for our national fabric, and for future good-faith efforts to shape sensible, compassionate immigration policy. There are likewise policies that can support a healthier public which we have pursued in recent years with less grace than we should have, which has limited our ability to build a big-tent movement for health. Keeping grace, always, in view can help keep our efforts inclusive and, in the broader context of our politics, keep what we say and do as humane as possible.

Of course, keeping grace in view is not always easy. What are some of the challenges that get in the way of grace?

First, there is the perception that grace is weakness, that to show grace is to acquiesce to those who would do us harm. This strikes me as wrong. Our media and politics are full of examples of what seem at first look to be shows of strength, but which, on closer examination, betray fundamental insecurity and weakness. True strength comes from the capacity to hold the line against those who would undermine our efforts while embracing the grace that prevents us from becoming like them. Anyone can fight against a threat; even animals can do that. But only the truly strong, and fully human, can do so while showing the grace and forbearance that make a better world possible even in the context of enmity.

Second, there is the concern that showing grace can lead to delay, a lack of expediency in our efforts. Grace often means patience. It means doing the slow work of persuasion, of building support in ways that make people feel comfortable with the changes we would like to make. This work does indeed take time. Yet it yields outcomes which are arguably more durable over the long-term. If we take the time to listen to others, to engage with different points of view, to do all we can to meet people where they are, the connections we build will become the glue holding together a strong, stable coalition for health. This may take a bit more time, but in the sense of the old saying “measure twice, cut once,” in which what we do is all the better for having been done with the patience that comes with grace.

Third is the concern that grace is a kind of a naïveté, one that leaves us vulnerable to being co-opted by more cynical, bad faith actors. Can showing grace become a kind of appeasement, as forbearance for those who may wish us ill allows them the space to keep harming us? This is a genuine risk, one not lightly dismissed. It is true, of course, that we can show grace without being naïve. Indeed, it is only possible to show true forbearance when we have a realistic understanding of the character and intentions of those with whom we are dealing. Yet even when we are realistic, clear-eyed, it is also true that showing grace can perhaps make us more vulnerable in the short-term. In the long-term, however, grace tends to support the ultimate success of efforts towards justice.

During the civil rights movement, for example, the practice of nonviolence made activists vulnerable to real harm. But their embrace of grace—in their tactics and in their rhetoric—led to the success of their efforts as their example helped galvanize a nation against the injustice of racism. The same is true of the movement, led by Gandhi, against British imperial rule in India. There, the embrace of grace could at times be mistaken for weakness, yet, in the end, it was grace, not empire, that triumphed. This is perhaps a paradox, but history has shown that a strategic willingness to make ourselves more vulnerable by choosing grace can, in the long run, give us the strength to succeed, changing the world for the better.

All this reflects the truth of what Remnick wrote. Grace takes strength, discipline. It is “not weakness but resolve.” Putting grace at the center of what we do does not place us at the mercy of events and bad actors. Rather, it gives us a way to deal with them and emerge from the experience better, more effective in our pursuit of a healthier world.

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Also this week

In JAMA Health Forum:

Advancing the Science and Scholarship of Health Equity - with Sugy Choi and Ninez Ponce