Successful Failures

Learning to see our failures as spiritual success

02/17/2017

Genesis 11:1-9 The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words. While the people were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire." They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth." The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that they had built. Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says." Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world.

          Several years ago I read something by Scott Hahn that has gnawed on me ever since, kind of like a holy chigger or tick that stubbornly refuses to let go even though it was a very unpleasant insight. I wish I could remember where he said it, but he was describing his amazing ability to shed light on dark and dense passages of Scripture and theology and make them understandable. He said (I’m paraphrasing), “When I do something well, that is for your benefit. But when I do something poorly, or fail at something, that is for my benefit.” In other words, we grow by his success (we enjoy his books and audios), while he grows by his failures (he learns humility and his deeper need for God). That may sound like the exact opposite of “common sense,” but that makes perfect “Christian sense.” In the Christian sense, failure is frequently fruitful, spiritually speaking.

          Scott Hahn was a Presbyterian minister, and a highly successful one at that, enjoying the esteem of his peers and clearly a rising star in the Protestant universe. But his growing attraction to Catholicism, and eventually his conversion, cost him all that success. To many of his friends and family, Hahn looked like an utter failure. But was he? His wife, Kimberly, in a book she coauthored with Scott, wrote: “Scott suffered tremendous loneliness. He was misunderstood and rejected by many Protestant friends who didn’t want to talk to him” (Rome Sweet Home, 109). Scott and Kimberly learned that sometimes “failure” in the worldly sense means “success” in the spiritual sense. And they knew which one mattered more. They wanted to enjoy more and more “successful failures,” because that helped them to grow closer to Christ and to become more like Christ.

          Today’s readings also touch this painful paradox: to seem to fail is really to succeed. The book of Genesis describes the people’s desire to “make a name for themselves” by building a tower that could touch heaven. The implication is that they wanted to storm heaven, take it by force, over-throw it and God; they wanted to conquer heaven and plant the flag of humanity on its golden streets like Neil Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon. All that was suggested by “making a name for themselves.” But God confuses their speech and they fail. That failure was actually a huge spiritual success, however, because they learned to be humble and rely on God’s help. And humanity would achieve infinitely more with the help of God’s grace than they could dream. In the gospel Jesus says cryptically: “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” In other words, use a different set of scales to measure “success” and “failure.” Sometimes your greatest failures will turn out in the end to be your proudest moments of success, just ask Scott and Kimberly Hahn.

          Today prayerfully peruse your past and look at your successes and your failures. Where did you do well? Maybe you graduated at the top of your high school class. Perhaps you play the piano with proficiency and poise. Maybe you make a mean bread pudding (then you need to invite me over for dinner!). Perhaps you’ve raised humble and holy children. For all these successes, give God the glory, and realize they help others more than they help you. On the other hand, look at your flops and failures. Maybe you wrecked your car. Perhaps you’ve cut corners at work and spent too much time on Facebook and Pinterest and got fired. Maybe an illness or even a divorce makes you feel like a failure. I sure hope none of these misfortunes befall you, but when they do – and they surely will – they can be moments of blinding grace, where we desire God’s mercy and love and strength more than ever before, and no longer lean on ourselves so much. It is moments like these that also teach us to appreciate our “successful failures.”

          Praised be Jesus Christ!