An act of faith
Adventurer who prayed with Obama says professing his beliefs was a test of bravery
Bear Grylls selects which projects to take on, he explains, by going for the riskiest. That may explain why this adventurer, a former trooper with the British army, climbed Everest at 23, circumnavigated the British Isles on a Jet Ski, and made an unassisted crossing of the Atlantic in an open inflatable boat, before hosting extreme endurance TV shows such as Man vs. Wild, Worst Case Scenario and Running Wild with Bear Grylls.
His newest venture, he insists, pushes him to the limit. The man who, in a celebrated episode of Man vs. Wild, once emptied out the guts of a dead camel in the Sahara and then sheltered inside its carcass, has published a book about God. Soul Fuel: A Daily Devotional contains 365 reflections to carry readers through the year.
That Grylls has a private faith was known long before he invited Barack Obama to say a prayer with him at the end of filming an episode of Running Wild in 2015, when he took the then-u. S. president trekking in Alaska. But a daily devotional?
Grylls looks uncharacteristically sheepish.
“This is the only press I’m going to do on this, because half of me is a little bit self-conscious, and a little bit apprehensive,” he confesses. “Faith is a really intimate subject. And a difficult subject.”
The man christened Edward Michael, but called Bear by his big sister and everyone since, muses: “I could have not done a book on faith and it would be a lot safer.” It is a curious word to use, suggesting he feels he may be making himself a target by coming out as a believer in our secular, skeptical times. Grylls has never wanted to be categorized by faith in his public and professional life, in case it somehow causes viewers to see him as too holy or pious. “I have been asked to be patron of Christian organizations, and I always feel bad saying no, but I say no because I just don’t want that label.”
The book began as something he had written for his family. “I have three boys,” he says. Jesse, 16, Marmaduke, 13, and Huckleberry, 10, are raised by Grylls and his wife, Shara.
“Faith has been a quiet but powerful part of our family and their lives growing up. And if I were ever not around, which will happen one day, here (in the book) are my thoughts.”
How it went from family keepsake to bookstore fodder brings us back to Obama. “So many people ask me about praying with Obama. It was an off-camera moment at the end of it, but I thought, here is a man who I could see had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it just felt natural at the end of our journey.”
In a Youtube clip that went viral, Grylls asks the Lord to “bless and protect” the then-president’s “work and family” before both men say “Amen.” Today, he says, “People generally don’t want religion, but they like community and kindness. That stuff transcends borders and cultures.”
What formal religion there was in Grylls’ childhood came in his school chapel, and he didn’t like it.
“Everything was liturgical and cassocks and Latin,” he recalls, “and ‘You’re in trouble because you’re late.’ It was distant and cold and gave a false impression that God is distant and cold.
“And, for me, it has been a lifetime’s journey that is still continuing of unravelling religion from faith. The heart of Christ’s message was about freedom and fun and light and love and forgiveness and risk-taking — always messy. But my experience as a child was of it being too neat.”
After his marriage at 25 to Shara in 2000, Grylls got involved with a group of friends who met regularly to play squash.
“It was brilliant, not a parody but a reflection of how ‘church’ should be, because there were (a bunch) of us — me, a vicar, a second-hand car dealer, a gay antique art dealer, a policeman, a soldier and a nightclub owner.
“We were totally different, but we’d meet every day at three o’clock and we always had each other’s backs in our lives.”
Grylls is not someone who feels the need to channel his own faith through denominations or institutions, and that is the spirit of Soul Fuel.
The text is based on a regular exchange he has about God with an old friend, Jim Hawkins, a teacher.
“I miss the friendship and vulnerability of having an accountable buddy to share life things with on a deeper level than catching up for a beer,” he says.
“With Jim, I’ve done a daily thing for many years — reading the Bible together and then emailing thoughts and some feeling and some struggles. Just short, 10 minutes.”
In one of the entries, Grylls writes that the “perfect love of God” casts out fear. Is his faith the force that makes him so fearless on screen?
“I have plenty of fear,” he corrects me. “I feel fear every day, but I’ve learned two things — one, that that is OK; and two, that being brave isn’t the absence of fear.” And he feels braver, he admits, when he says a prayer.
“Someone asked me recently, was I praying when my parachute wasn’t opening (in an accident in Kenya in 1997 that ended his military career)? Of course, I wasn’t. I was saying, ‘F---, open!’ If I’d answered with some platitude, that would have been Christian bull----. That,” he protests, “is what puts people off Christians.”