on the ethics of failure

It interesting that what is on my heart right now is the issue of failure.  I have failed this blog.  I have failed to update at all since May of last year.  This is an extreme personal failure in my estimation because it is something I set out to do and did for only two days and then dropped it entirely.  But the issues that this situation raises are larger than that, for ethics drums its boney fingers on the kitchen table, asking is it alright to fail and is it alright and morally acceptable to feel like a failure?


I've never tried to come up with a list of failures in my life--I think that'd be a dreadfully morbid thing to do--but I think a recurring analysis of the failures that I would list would be things that never met my own expectations.  I admit it, I have high expectations for myself, and I'm ok with that because I look at some of the most driven people and I am inspired by them.  John Wesley, for example, preached on average 15 times a week which resulted in preaching around 40,000 sermons during his lifetime.  This is incredible considering that the average pastor, preaching once a week over a 30-year career, would only muster 1,500 sermons.  Throw in a few funerals and weddings and the odd extra sermons and you might end up 2,000 sermons.  That's still paltry compared to Wesley.
So, I am ok with high expectations of myself, if they are within reason.  But my humanity inevitably often rears its ugly head, and I am aware that I'm not perfect and that I mess up with regularity and often don't reach my goals.  But it's how I act when I that happens that is important.  To often in my own life I beat myself up for having missed the mark, for having messed up, and though this initial mental self-flagellation starts innocently enough it eventually moves into a perpetual continuing action that becomes degrading and debilitating.  Anyone will tell you that this is obviously not good, for perpetual self-condemnation has a paralyzing effect.  Here's a poem I dug out of an old notebook of mine that paints a picture of that.

Failure is an option
When I wake most days
I am already in a daze
and inside my head
while laying on my bed
I wonder if I should even get
up.

The fear of failure is a paralyzing thing, and I think that this is something all people should be wary of.  It's something to think about that if Thomas Edison was afraid of failing, it is possible we might not have lightbulbs today or be able to play music on our mp3 players.  The old adage is that Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times, but I believe it to be correctly this:  Thomas Edison's philosophy on inventing was so optimistic that even though he might fail 10,000 times he would see it as 10,000 ways for something to not work.  Even more so, he opted to call his failures "ways in which something will not work."

I think it's proper and fitting to take a page from Edison optimism and look at our failures in life, our not meeting our own expectations, as ways in which to not do something in the future.  We can indeed learn from our failures and apply them to our future activities.  And look at it this way:  if we are too afraid to try something new or different because we are afraid of failing, we need to realize that we are missing out on finding ways in which something will not work.

And in the Christian context, we need to be mindful that even though we fail sometimes by succumbing to sin and not following or obeying God, there is a perfect unfailing person in Jesus Christ who redeemed us at the cross and makes us spotless and perfect before God if we trust in him and ask him for forgiveness.  Most miserable we are if we do not seek the perfection in Christ that is ours as children of God.