The comeback code and the blind spot of a smart book

There's a book on my nightstand that I've read with pleasure and slight frustration. The Comeback Code by Julien De Wit. I know Julien a bit, and I'm not saying this as an anonymous critic but as someone who values his work and takes him intellectually seriously. It's a smart book. Broad, well-documented, essayistic in the best sense of the word. And yet it misses something fundamental. Something that — and that's the painful part — could have made the book much stronger.

But let me start with what's in it. Because the foundation is correct.

What De Wit says — and why it's worth it

The central thesis is so clear that it almost sounds simple: whoever wants to survive a crisis and emerge stronger needs two things. Resilience — the ability to stay upright without losing yourself. And reinvention — the ability in chaos not to look for what was, but for what can be. Resilience without reinvention hardens into armor. Reinvention without resilience collapses at the first headwind. Only together do they form what he calls the comeback code.

He extends this code across three levels: individuals, organizations, and societies.

At an individual level, he builds his analysis around recognizable figures. Abraham Lincoln as a model of someone who did not suppress loss, failure and crisis but gave them a place — and thus continued to function. Ernest Shackleton, who kept 28 men alive for months on an ice floe by providing structure, routine and always taking the very next step, never the end point. Isaac Newton, who made his greatest discoveries not despite a crisis but because of it — forced into isolation, freed from noise. The core of individual resilience, according to De Wit:distinguish between what you can influence and what you cannot, keep acting no matter how small, take care of your body, filter what you let into your head, and surround yourself with people who dare to contradict you honestly.

At the organizational level, his analysis is sharper. Organizations that survive crises but do not reinvent themselves become operationally robust but strategically fragile. Swissair, Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia — they failed not due to lack of talent or resources, but because they remained strong for too long in a way that no longer fit. The LEGO case is his best: a company that almost innovated itself to death in the early 2000s by wanting to be too many things at once, and saved itself by asking the most radical question — 'what are we actually?' The answer wassimple and confronting. And from that essence, true innovation followed.

At the societal level, he discusses Roosevelt and the New Deal, Finland, which chose to invest in education during a deep recession, and Taiwan, which made its technological position an existential security strategy. The resilient society, he says, needs a grand narrative—a narrative larger than the pain of the moment—plus the courage to make explicit choices, the infrastructure to anchor those choices, and the strategic power to not be chosen but to choose for itself.

It's a good book. Really. Widely read, clearly structured, and it has the intellectual honesty to admit that its essay is an ‘attempt’, not a definitive system.

But then there is that absence.

The absence that is no coincidence.

Somewhere in the chapter on resilient society, there is one paragraph about religion. De Wit names it as one of the three categories of ‘grand narratives’ that hold societies together: alongside ideological-identitarian stories and political-economic stories, there are religious stories that give meaning to suffering, loss, and finitude, offering answers where rational explanations fall short. His phrasing is striking: ‘Societies without these kinds of stories are left empty-handed.’

And then he continues.

One paragraph. In a 160-page book about precisely the question for which religion has built the most elaborate answer system in human history.

I don't believe this is a coincidence. I also don't believe Julien finds the subject unimportant. I think he senses it—you read it between the lines—but he doesn't dare to name it. Victor Frankl is mentioned, but only as a psychologist. The Stoics receive ample attention, but their religious dimension is cut out. Rituals are described as social cement, not as an encounter with the transcendent. Everywhere he approaches the boundary, he withdraws.

That is a missed opportunity. Not only for the book, but for the analysis of the polycrisis itself.

Because look at what De Wit says people need to bear crises: a story larger than the pain of the moment. A foundation of meaning that is not dependent on success. A reference point outside the system that carries them. Absolute honesty about who you are, independent of what you achieve. The courage to act without a guarantee of outcome.

That is not a description of a psychological technique. That is a description of what religion does at its best.

And then there is an even deeper layer. De Wit describes the polycrisis as a state of interwoven, reinforcing crises that feed each other. He asks how societies can be resilient in such times. But he does not ask whether the loss of religion itself is partly an explanation for that polycrisis. I think so. Not as a nostalgic argument - 'things were better in the past' - but as a structural insight: societies that lose their transcendent anchor point simultaneously lose the most robust source of collectivemeaning, of individual resilience, of moral orientation that is not dependent on the whims of the day. What you are left with are stories that are more vulnerable, systems of meaning that break as soon as circumstances turn bad.

More religion — or more precisely: more recognition of the value that Christianity has to offer, without me advocating that everyone becomes a member of a church — would not weaken its comeback code. It would complete it.

Religion itself on the comeback

But then the question reverses. For if religion plays such a central role in resilience and reinvention — can we then apply De Wit's model to religion itself? Is religion currently making a comeback?

I think we need to be honest about what the data says. Institutional de-churching in Western Europe continues structurally. That cannot be reasoned away. But at the same time, you see a movement in the other direction that you cannot ignore: increasing interest in spirituality, contemplation, and meaning — even outside church walls. A return of younger generations, also in the US, to pronounced and identity-forming religious communities. Growing public interest in figures like Augustine or the mystics, not as pious devotionbut as an intellectual quest. A growing awareness, even among secular thinkers, that the grand narratives of atheistic humanism miss something that people truly need.

There is no single great revival. But there is a fragmented pattern of re-sourcing that is worth taking seriously.

If I honestly apply De Wit's model to religion — and as a bishop, I can hardly do otherwise — then I see two challenges that must be addressed simultaneously. And I say 'challenges' deliberately: this is not a non-committal observation but a call to action, also to myself and to the people with whom I work.

The first challenge: the church as a resilient, innovative organization

De Wit describes how organizations that survive crises make exactly that mistake: they become strong in a way that no longer fits. Operationally robust, strategically fragile. They confuse form with function. They optimize what exists instead of asking the radical question: what are we, actually?

The church must also dare to ask that question. Not as a threat to the message, but as a condition for carrying it. The core of Christianity is reconciliation, hope, the value of every human life, the presence of God even in suffering, the community that transcends people. That core is not the problem. That core is precisely what the world needs. The problem is when we protect the form instead of the function.

The LEGO question for the church is: what do we actually do, if we disregard everything that is not essential? And the answer to that question should be surprisingly clear and surprisingly relevant. But then we must also be willing to innovate from that essence — in how we communicate, in what forms we use, in how we are present in society — without touching the message itself. On the contrary: precisely by focusing on the essence, we can put it more powerfully and clearly into the world.

That is a challenge I feel daily as a bishop. Remaining relevant without becoming a social club. Connecting with the questions of the time without softening the answers. Communicating the message clearly without reducing it to a feel-good story. That is the difference between a church that reacts to the secular vacuum and a church that speaks from its own strength.

De Wit describes how innovative organizations don't need more ideas but better questions. That also applies here.

The second challenge: religion as a contribution to the broader society

The other side of the comeback is less internal. Because if religion truly plays the role I think it plays in resilience and reinvention, then that is not only relevant for people who are already religious. Then religion has something to say in the broad societal discussion about how we cope with the polycrisis.

De Wit describes how societies need grand narratives — stories that are larger than the pain of the moment, that bind people beyond their individual interests, that offer an ultimate foundation of meaning that is not dependent on success or political legitimacy. He also describes how rituals and traditions hold societies together, how they make periods of crisis bearable.

What he doesn't say — but what I do dare to say — is that Christianity, on all these points, has not only historically played a role but still has something to offer today that secular alternatives cannot provide. Not as a monopoly, not as a state religion, not as a coercive identity — but as a living tradition that has answers to the questions posed by the polycrisis and that secular systems leave unanswered.

Why is this suffering bearable? What do we owe each other, even if nothing is to be expected in return? What provides direction when all external anchor points fall away? What makes the human person irreducible to their productivity?

These are not the questions of a religious niche. These are the questions of a society in crisis.

The comeback of religion is therefore not only an internal matter for believers. It is an opportunity and a responsibility to actively participate in the broad discussion about recovery and reinvention. To demonstrate, not to proclaim, what a believing community can concretely mean. In caring for the vulnerable. In preserving common stories. In offering an anchor point to people who are in the midst of the storm and find no foothold anywhere.

Shackleton kept his men alive by maintaining structure and always taking the next step. But he also did so because he believed it was worth it. That conviction, namely that refusal to believe that everything is meaningless, is precisely what religion offers in the most direct sense.

De Wit's comeback code is correct. Resilience plus reinvention. Never one without the other. The scale doesn't matter: it applies to people, organizations, and societies.

But he missed the most robust source of both. Not because it isn't there. But perhaps because it was too big to quickly gloss over.

I hope he dares to name it next time. And I hope the church has the courage to show that it is worth naming.