“What a fail!”
My daughter says that all the time when she wants to express disgust about someone or their actions. She will watch a soccer game on TV and when a striker misses a goal she’ll say, “What a fail!” When I drop something in the kitchen she’ll say, “What a fail!” Frankly I don’t get it, but I figure it’s better than her saying, “That sucks!”
Over the past few months, the word “fail” has taken on new-found popularity, yet “Fail” is an expression I refuse to use. Not because I’m like Ed Harris in Apollo 13, confidently declaring “Failure is not an option!” But because I hate when people my age try to use popular teenage expressions. It brings back bad childhood memories of a musical-variety special I once saw in which Lucille Ball kept using the word “hep”.
On Twitter, there is a hash tag #fail on which people tweet things they have failed at over the course of the day. So it’s common to see tweets like, “Just drove two hours in traffic to meeting and found out it’s tomorrow not today #fail.” Or “put lasagna in oven two hours ago but never turned oven on #fail.” There is a website called failblog.org that posts pictures and videos of people failing at various endeavors from bicycle jumps to inadvertent x-rated advertisements.
However, I am left to wonder why do we have this fascination with failure? Why do we enjoy seeing other people fail and even find humor in it?
I think it’s for the same reason we enjoy horror movies and roller coasters. We are fascinated by that which frightens us, and for many of us, failure one of our biggest fears and hence our fascination with it. In our life’s journey of getting to who God wants us to be, our fears are like roadblocks. Fear of failure is one of the first we run into and it stops us in our tracks.
Sometimes this fear blocks our biggest dreams; starting a new business, moving to a new town, beginning a new ministry here at Vision. Sometimes this fear blocks our more intimate initiatives; making new friends, learning a new skill, or just showing up at a Vision event. In our mind we create an expectation that we will try this new experience, most likely feeling ill-equipped, fumble our way through it and fail. In turn, that will bring out our critics, both external and internal. Therefore, we tell ourselves, it is just safer to never begin in the first place. We protect ourselves with the dream-smothering assurance that if we never get our hopes up and try, we will never risk disappointment.
This is nothing new to human nature and Jesus knew it. So he told his followers a story about a master who goes away on a trip and leaves three of his servants with differing amounts of cash. In older Bible translations, the amounts described are the equivalent of twenty or so years of wages. Even the third servant, who receives less than the others, gets a sizable chunk.
It is notable that in Matthew’s version of the story, each person is given a different amount. Just as in real life, where we are all given various amounts of financial resources or talents. We are all born into various circumstances, some privileged, some challenging. God created each of us with differing and unique abilities, gifts and graces.
What we begin with in life is usually outside of our control. However, what we do with what we have been given, is under our control. We can be like the first two servants, who take their master’s gift and multiply it, or we can be like the third who buried his gifts. He plays it safe. He risks nothing. The reason he is frozen in his ability to do anything with his gift is fear – fear of failure.
Sure, this servant has an elaborate rationalization for his fear. Basically, he blames his master for his own inaction, claiming his master is an unreasonable and impossible taskmaster. So why even bother trying, he argues. After all, no matter what he did with the money, his master would find fault with it. As it turns out, this servant’s assumptions about his master are not true. The master found no fault in the actions of the other two servants. In fact, because of the good stewardship they demonstrated with their gifts, they are invited into partnership with their master.
Somewhere along the line, this third servant got the wrong image of his master, which paralyzed him in the fear of failure. We all have people in our life who gives us nothing but criticism and put downs. These people can be your spouse, your parents, your boss or your friends. They never have anything positive to say. When you share your dreams and ideas, they immediately squash them.
Although we may fear failing in front of your human critics, we have to move past that because their opinions don’t matter anyway. Your worth does not reside in what other people think of you or say about you. Your worth resides in your identity as a child of God for whom Christ died. Consequently, there is no need to fear failure in front of people.
Even worse, we make a fatal mistake when we take the characteristics of these naysayers and project them onto God. God is not the finger-wagging father for whom nothing you do is ever right or perfect enough. God is not the undermining constantly critical spouse, always looking to point out your faults to you or anyone who will listen. God is not the jealous friend who needs to put down your talents just so he can feel superior to you.
Now that doesn’t mean that everything that pops into our head is what God wants us to do. We all have ideas and dreams that are not only foolish, but may also be just plain wrong or even sinful. We need to discern and pray about our dreams, how to use our gifts, and what God is truly calling us to do in life. But that discernment process should never become a mask for what is really our own fear of failure.
God has given you and me unique and extraordinary combinations of gifts. As followers of Jesus, our mission is not to bury them in the ground and protect them. It is to put them to use in the world, to become partners with what Christ is doing, and multiply the gifts we have been given. Beyond that, our church has been given gifts and talents as a community. While it is tempting to just bury them and protect them, God calls us to risk using our gifts as a community as well.
If we fail, that’s okay too. Even Jesus failed. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of the first time he went back to his hometown and was rejected. So much so, that the text says he was unable (a word which later Gospel writers removed) to perform any miracles there. From that experience, Jesus could have easily developed a fear of failure and never risked preaching or healing anyone again. If he were like some of us, he would have determined that the world was out to get him, that the deck was stacked against him, and better to play it safe than risk it all with a public ministry.
Thankfully, for our sake, he didn’t do that. Jesus did not allow fear of failure to paralyze him. He didn’t bury the gift God gave him. He was, in fact, the gift God gave us. It was we humans who decided he was failure. We killed him and we buried him. But he didn’t stay buried. That is how Christ can get us past our fear of failure. While we may bury God’s gifts, God will resurrect them.
I may not know you well, but here’s two things I can say about you for sure. One is that God has given you unique and incredible gifts. Two is that you have buried some, if not all of them, because you are afraid that if you tried to do anything with them, you would fail. Although you may think you’re playing it safe, you’re really on dangerous ground.
The master in Jesus’ story gets angry, not because the servant tried to do something with his gifts and failed. The master gets angry because the servant never tried. When you play it safe like that servant, you risk ending up with nothing and others stepping into the role that is rightfully yours. You risk a life of regret and wondering what might have been.
Here is the good news. God does not promise us a failure-free life, but God doesn’t forbid us to fail. It is okay when we do because Jesus is always there to pick us up and give us a second chance. God does not love us any less when we fail. In fact, we may actually learn something or grow from our failures.
So how is that good news? It’s good news because we have nothing to lose and nothing to fear.
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