A family rolled up in a refurbished travel van that had reached the last of its nine lives. The Father-Leader slopped out of the drivers’ cabin. The cold, steel wind cut under his nostrils, and he shivered a bit. His family followed behind into the Starbucks. They looked like a dreary winter afternoon.
The first thing I noticed, I suppose, was the expressions the Father-Leader’s children wore. The oldest son—sixteen or seventeen—was growing beyond his father. His hipster apparel and clean white Vans contrasted against Father-Leader’s 90s plaid revealed that much. This Hipster Youth had a thousand-yard stare. Eyes still. Mouth stiffened into a subtle frown that said, “I haven’t spoken in twelve hours.” The younger son was a teen too, less stylishly refined than his brother but equally bored. The two had a younger sister—a little girl no older than ten with long brown hair—in a happy yellow blouse that begged for happy conversation that she clearly did not receive from the deadened older brothers and fathers.
Hipster Youth took the window seat with his family. I glanced over. He stared.
My instincts gave me a kick in the heart. I looked down, hoping that my note-taking should go unnoticed. It did.
I guess the second thing that I noticed was their silence and lack of effort to quell its deafening presence.
A very non-familial family, I thought. Maybe my judgment was too swift for a few seconds of observation. Yet, it seemed right. Intuitive. It also set a sad, pitiful feeling in my stomach. I hoped they would have a small conversation at least.
The father started. Would he break the weight of the depressing quiet?
His phone glared with a stabbing blue light as he withdrew it from his pocket. He ignored the pleading eyes of his young girl.
…
Most people fear failure. Who wouldn’t? The idea of your significant other breaking up with you for your faults, dropping out of school because of poor grades, or getting fired from work, rightfully, should feel like terrible thoughts. However, does that mean failure is the worst thing that could happen to you?
I wholly disavow that notion.
No, the worst thing that could happen to any person is not failure. It is prior to failure. True Failure is not attempting and falling short. True Failure is completely refusing to try to do what is good and right. It is pure apathy in its unadulterated, disgusting form. It is a Father-Leader succumbing to binge-watching Sunday Night Football while his family starves emotionally. It is a son giving himself to pornography without any resistance nor intention to change. It is a daughter gossiping with no remorse. It is a conversation in a Starbucks that never happens because one is afraid of a bad conversation. (Sorry, Starbucks Father-Leader! I hope you actually have a great family; you just happened to be a good illustration.)
True Failure is giving up—not on yourself. Rather, it is giving up on God’s ability to transform your failures into His glory.
…
The key difficulty in facing off against True Failure is that it requires a willingness to experience Temporary Failure, which often requires you to face your greatest fears.
See, Temporary Failure is what happens when you try and do not succeed. Take a tried-and-true example: a young man fancies a young woman. He spends time with her and thinks, “I like this woman’s character and would like to get to know her more.” So, he asks her on a date. She says no. He has failed. However, it is a Temporary Failure.
Yet, this experience tells us something. Temporary Failure is not risk-free, and it is not consequence-free. The young man does not always get to look back and say, “Boy, I sure am glad she turned me down!” He may deal with awkward interactions with her in the future. If she was good friends with others around him, he might experience some distance in valuable friendships. She might experience the same. Furthermore, he cannot predict the future. He cannot know if her answer will be yes or no. Risk and consequence.
This is why Temporary Failure scares us. We like neither risk nor consequence. Risk can inspire deep uncertainty which can breed deeper anxiety. This anxiety can drive us to worry so much about the “correct” decision that we either do nothing or do too much, becoming desperate and avoidant in our actions.
Consequence encourages comfort. It can trick us into believing that pursuing certain courses of action is too costly. Asking a girl out turns into a Herculean task that will result in total divorce from our entire community and the death of your dearest love one if she says no (I have no idea how that could even happen, don’t ask me, but that’s what it feels like). Then, again, we do nothing. We beg for the status quo.
This deceptive duo—risk and consequence—combines into one master: True Apathy. When you obey True Apathy, you bear its burden, True Failure, like a slave.
…
If our decisions were up to us, we might have a case for sometimes obeying True Apathy and sometimes not. Unfortunately, Proverbs has a fight to pick.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Proverbs 3:5-6
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Do not trust your own evaluation of whether or not it is worthwhile to take on risks and consequence. We have one simple criteria that should motivate every decision we make: does it glorify God, or does it not? If the decision does, it must be done. No questions asked.
We are flawed, incapable human beings in a flawed, corrupted world. Therefore, even when we obey God, we might experience Temporary Failure. That is inevitable. Still, every word I type points to a more important objective than avoiding Temporary Failure.
Admit it. You want more than mere avoidance. You want even more than just one success. Every human has a deep desire for more. We want our troubles, worries, pains, enemies, and failures entirely crushed. I want victory.
Victory is growth, because growth is the enemy of True Apathy. When you seek to grow in godliness and obedience, you seek to do that which you know you ought to do for the glory of God. This leads you and I into extremely difficult decisions and circumstances. It requires sacrificing our dreams, wants, and needs. We will risk and lose gambles. We will fight and face the consequences. Yet, this leads us to growth.
When we face these Temporary Failures, God builds us up into the people we ought to be. We grow our character, and we participate in God growing the Kingdom.
In fact, this growth overcomes everything else. Despite our Temporary Failures, God provides strength to continue growing. No failure—True nor Temporary—can stop Him.
…
This is an encouragement to pursue the climbing the mountains that God calls you to.
Lately, I have been weighing different research ideas. I could do work that directly translates to ministry: answering questions related to mental health, economic predictors of human disasters (ex. mass shootings), and education among failing young men. Additionally, options exist that indirectly relate to these, but they are not obviously “ministerial”.
Somewhere inside myself, I thought pursuing these indirect options and failing would be the worst thing that I could do. I would waste my time on some irrelevant idea that doesn’t even obviously glorify God? How terrible.
Yet, such a thought reeks with the stench of True Failure.
I should reach for glorifying God to the fullest extent that I can. Though I cannot detail my ideas here (don’t want that stolen!), I can illustrate what I hope for in pursuing the indirect options. They would open up a window into studying human decision making in a way that has never before been explored in economic literature. Then, I would use the insights I gain to do more.
A company could use these ideas to free men from poor decisions and addictions, then spur them on to build careers they could use to support their families, love others, and serve God. I could take the money I earn to support my family, invest in my community, and propagate change in an entire industry. Many lives would change for the better.
I should risk it and bear the consequences if God calls me to that.
Is there a person that you need to speak to for reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace? Speak. Do you have a business idea that might pour back into your community and build up men and women of God? Risk it within your responsibilities. Ponder the good works God has prepared for you, and do them.
May God make your efforts fruitful.
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