Failures

Recently I had a friend tell me that her biggest fear was failure, and it made me realize two things: we are obsessed with winning, and that I am a failure.

I will now list a few of my most recent failures:
-I lost two very important books to me in my travels over break.
-I have lost 4 out of 4 hockey games in the last 2 weeks.
-In the game I play online I have lost every battle recently
-I got a speeding ticket because I failed to catch a sign saying the speed limit was changing
-I failed to catch that my tabs were expired and I had invalid insurance cards on me.

Now most of these failures are minor and just annoyances, but it got me to thinking deeper and farther back. My failure at sports when I was younger, my failures as a student, my many failures with regards to my family, to my friends. My failures as a Residential minister, my failures as a researcher, quite frankly I realized I have failed at everything.

Why do we fear failure? Despite what society wants us to believe failure is the norm, success is not. Looking at the world we see tons of failure everywhere, from the failure of society to care for the broken, the poor, the sick, to the failure of individuals, the failing economy. The norm of this existence is failure. Thermodynamics and some theories of the universe teach us that the universe tends towards decay, towards failure. One day the earth will fail to sustain life, the sun will fail, and all will tend towards a state of maximum entropy and the entire universe will fail. Failure is the norm and rule of this reality. Sure some may claim some minor victories, but even if you win every battle, every contest even if you are the most successful person on earth ever, your body will fail and you will die. In the end everything you did will be for naught, a complete and total failure.

So whats the point? Why even try if it will all be failure in the end?

Because death and physics do not have the final word. The norm of this reality is not the rule of all. No there is a higher and greater Rule, a Reality which supersedes and permeates our own. It is the Reality of the Resurrection, the Fact of Life Incarnate, the one thing that ever has and ever will matter: Jesus Christ. While we were still yet living in a world of decay, death and damnation, the Life, the Light, came down an was made man. Even while He slept at His mother's bosom failure continued as Herod murdered the innocents, the society deteriorated, death ran rampant, even in the Reality of the Incarnation death claimed its hold. But the miraculous happened, and it began in His ministry. The dead were raised, the blind made to see, the lame made to walk. All the failure, all the decay began to turn back, Life had come and death was fleeing! In one more attempt to rule this world and set all to destruction and failure death claimed Christ, satan worked his tyranny to kill Life. But in the moment of the darkness apparent victory Life rose up to deal the killing blow. Death died on the cross, and satan was utterly destroyed. The enemies fought, and lost! Christ rose on the third day and Life claimed its victory. The Life came into the world and abolished death, destroyed the immanent failure of life and replaced it with the victory that is Life.


So whats the point? Why even try if it will all be failure in the end?

Even though we fail, even though the tyrants of this world still work us woe, we have the final victory. We do not try to succeed, but we try because Christ already has succeeded. We do not have to win, we do not have to succeed, the Victory has already been won by Christ, and so we are called to live in that victory. Even if we fail at our tasks, even if we end up broken on the street, poor, despondent, and shattered remnant of some semblance of what the world calls 'success' we will still have won, we will still have the Victory, for it is not ours to gain or to hold, instead it is Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit through the waters of Holy Baptism. In Baptism we admitted the ultimate failure, we admitted that we were dead, and we sacrificed every vain hope of success in those waters and rose in victory by what Christ has done, and not by any work or deed that we may or may not have done.

We will fail, the world will look at our lives and label them complete failures, empty, a tragic waste, but it will not matter for we have the Life, the Victory in Christ. Fear not failure, for even if the world crumbles around you and everything that was good turns sour, and every venture fails there is still Life found and given through the waters of Baptism, into the One True Life.