Facing Failure

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here
 
Hope is life’s extraordinary antidote for discouragement.
 
That doesn’t mean that success always comes easily.
 
Winston Churchill was once asked what most prepared him to sustain his lonely fight against Adolph Hitler throughout the 1930’s (when many British leaders saw no danger in the Nazi regime), and how he found the courage to rally Britain again and again during World War II. 
 
Churchill answered that his greatest preparation came from having to repeat a grade in elementary school.
 
“You mean you failed a year in school?” someone asked. “I never failed anything in my life,” Churchill replied. “I was given a second opportunity to get it right.”
 
According to social psychologist Gilbert Brim, five of the 20th century’s best-selling books were each rejected by more than a dozen publishers before being accepted:
 

  • M*A*S*H (Richard Hooker) got 21 rejection letters.
  • Kon-Tiki (Thor Heyerdahl) was thought unworthy of distribution by 20 publishers.
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach) heard “no, thank you” 18 times.
  • Auntie Mame (Patrick Dennis) was rejected by 17 potential publishers.
  • And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (the debut book of some guy named Dr. Seuss) got the thumbs-down 23 times.

Dr. Jonas Salk’s first 200 attempts to find a polio vaccine came up short. He later reflected, “I was taught not to use the word ‘failure.’ I just discovered 200 ways how not to vaccinate for polio.”

A remarkable slice of human experience – and a great many things that we will personally face before this new year comes to an end – can be labeled “failure.” 

Here we’re including the experiences of the men and women who are typically applauded as “Bible heroes.” Scripture, in fact, seems to go out of its way to spotlight the frailties and failures of its central human characters.

Moses was a murderer. The apostle Paul appears to have arranged serial lynchings. Abraham was a coward and a liar. Sarah was a vindictive schemer. David, “the man after God’s own heart,” was a murderer, adulterer, and consistently lousy parent.

Solomon, who was deemed the wisest man on the face of the earth, boasted 300 wives and 700 concubines – an astonishing relational track record that certainly calls into question whether he was in fact the wisest man on the face of the earth.

How about Jesus’ disciples? All of them seem to have been in the slow reading group.

The most spectacular church buildings in the world are named for apostles who sometimes failed spectacularly.

The late author and pastor Tim Keller said it well: “The Bible is the record of God’s intervening grace in the lives of people who don’t seek it, who don’t deserve it, who continually resist it, and who don’t appreciate it, even after they have been saved by it.”

In a fallen world, on this side of heaven, failure is inevitable.

But failure doesn’t have to be final. How we respond to failure is what primarily shapes us. By God’s grace, we are often granted a second or third or fourth opportunity to get things right.

Our great enemy in that quest is fear. Most of us dread the possibility of making a mess of things before the watching world. Fear keeps us from stepping out, taking risks, and attempting the audacious. 

Such fear will never go away – at least, not if we want to grow. That’s because fear and growth are like chips and salsa. They go together. Whenever God beckons us into a season of growth and change, the fear of failure will almost certainly present itself. But God assures us that he is bigger than anything we will ever have to face, including the fears that come along for the ride.

Does it feel as if you’re always facing problems? 

That’s a very good thing.

God helps us grow not by giving us the answers at the back of the book, but by providing problems that force us to choose between risk and comfort – between moving forward and slipping back.

Wise people everywhere agree that the antidote to the fear of failure is actually rather simple: Don’t walk away. Stay in the chaos. Courage grows, even by tiny increments, every time we decide to confront our problems instead of trying to figure out how we might escape.

What the Bible’s “heroes” learned is that as often as they stumbled and got things wrong, God always had their backs.

And what did they ultimately discover?

Failure is never final if our hope is anchored to Someone beyond ourselves.