A Concise Theology of Failure

Gospel reassurance for risk-averse Christians.

Why are Millennials and Gen-Z risk averse? I think it really boils down to two things:

1. No one likes to fail.

2. Our society does not offer anything worth having if you can’t have success.

And by “success” I don’t just mean getting rich or into the C suite. Success should be understood to mean getting the life that you want. A lot of people want the C suite. But some people want to be a tradwife. Tradwife influencers exist because they, no less than the childless travel mavens, exude success. They got what they wanted. They love it. They have not failed.

But what if you don’t get the life you wanted? In the digital age, you might as well not even exist. Failure is obscurity, and obscurity is death. In the post-religious imagination, without success, there is no meaning to one’s life. You can go on surviving, but each day that is spent contrary to what you actually want to be doing is a waste. If enough of these days accumulate, your very self disappears.

Extreme risk aversion is good math in this kind of society. Asking a girl out on a date? She might say no, you might get really embarrassed, and all the while you could have been masturbating without fear of either. Getting married is too risky; what if your spouse is unfaithful and you get divorced? What if they change in a way you don’t like? What if you feel stuck? Likewise, deep friendships are too risky. What if you end up betrayed? What if they have to move? Better to keep them on the periphery, focusing instead on your side hustle and your hobbies, things you can control.

This is a crippling mentality. Yet I’m unsure that many Christians know how to argue ourselves out of it. As we age, we tend to look back and think we should have taken more chances, not fewer. But how do you express this in a way that’s compelling to someone who’s looking ahead at their life rather than back? Answer: We need a working theology of failure.

A lot of Christians ascribe to the right doctrines but approach life decisions like dating and marriage with the same skewered risk/reward math. This is a problem, because the Christian gospel actually propels people toward greater risk. But we tend to acknowledge this only in global missions; the risk of moving overseas, where you don’t know the language and have no idea how to fit in, is worth it because the preaching of the gospel is so urgent. But preaching of the gospel is urgent where you live right now, too. Extreme risk aversion in an ordinary, stateside life is no less a failure to embrace the adventure of Christ than an unwillingness to heed a gospel call to the nations.

The best way to see this, I think, is through a theology of failure. A theology of failure does not ask you to believe that God guarantees your success everywhere. It doesn’t try to sell you a list of spiritualized goods. A theology of failure is a simple, practical set of beliefs, attitudes, and practices, rooted in Scripture and the gospel, that erode the fear of risk.

So here are three main ideas that sum up a (very!) concise theology of failure:

1. The gospel means that the worst thing you could ever do, you have already done, and the best thing that could ever happen to you, has already happened.

The worst thing anyone can ever do is sin against God. The worst thing anyone can ever do is disobey, ignore, grumble against, belittle, or hide from the majestic Creator and Sustainer of the universe. The penalty for this cosmic treason is eternal death. And everyone everywhere has committed this treason a thousand times over, and will commit it a thousand times more. The hell that gapes before sinners is the worst fate and the worst failure anyone can fathom.

The gospel, however, is the news that God himself sent his Son to absorb the penalty for treason and receive wrath reserved for us. God, the Judge whose very law condemns us, devised a plan to put his perfect, beautiful, beloved Son in the place of sinners. All the murder, all the lust, all the abuse, all the cursing, all the despair, all the bullying, all the selfishness in us was, somehow, transfused into the person of Christ, who endured the full, just judgment for it. As a result, not only is our slate clean; it is no longer a slate. The debt is not just forgiven; its ledger has been burned. We are freer than a death row inmate who has been pardoned; we have been given a new name that nobody can take away.

The gospel fuels risk-taking because we understand that whatever we fail at is nothing compared to the failure that was completely and totally wiped out by the death and resurrection of Jesus. If our worst failure has no power over us, then no other failure has that kind of power, either. We can make mistakes, fall short, and get it wrong, knowing that never have to look over our shoulder wondering if there’s someone who can and would keep us chained to it. Failure is not fatal.

2. This world is responsive to our choices, and God has shown us enough of his wisdom to help us get good responses. But the world is also fallen.

In other words, this world is not a freakish accident nor Darwinian cage match. This world, the world of joy and grief and adventure and opportunity and failure, is designed by a rational Person whose wisdom is embedded in it. According to God, this world is set up in a certain way so that productive, clever, well-timed, and wise choices are possible, and these choices will tend to (not infallibly) produce success.

In other words, the world is a garden. If you get to know this garden, you can understand what will grow and what will wither. And then you can, by God’s wisdom, plant what will grow, and expect it to grow.

For example, if plant hard work, even work that wears you out from time to time, you can reasonably expect wealth and security to grow. If you plant people skills—the ability to really listen to what someone is saying, to “get” them, and to use words carefully and seasonably—you can reasonably expect friendship and intimacy and a good reputation to grow. If you plant self-control in food and drink and sex, you can reasonably expect authority and happiness to grow.

But it won’t grow every time. Sometimes hard work won’t get a due reward. Sometimes people skills are wasted on the apathetic. Sometimes self-control gets you made fun of, and nothing more. This doesn’t mean that the world is an arbitrary place where your choices don’t matter. It means that the garden is a fallen garden, full of snakes, pests, weeds, and other things that sometimes get the upper hand.

You can accept the disappointments and failures of life better when you realize that they do not mean you are doomed to a chaotic existence. Embracing risk and adventure is not playing the lottery. If a guy came to me and told me he wanted to ask a girl in our church out on a date, I couldn’t promise him success, but I could tell him a few things which would absolutely help: “Get to know her enough first to ask her out to something she’d enjoy. Plan something low-stress. Take a shower, buy a new shirt, don’t talk about your Pokemon collection. Don’t ask her a hundred questions in a row, and don’t just talk about yourself the whole night.”

The garden will sometimes resist you until the Master Gardener comes. Until that day, keep cultivating, keep expecting fruit, and don’t be shocked or dismayed when sometimes the harvest disappoints.

3. Christ’s death and resurrection is the model for how we can expect our lives in this world to go. That means there are depths of learning, meaning, and growth that are only possible through failure.

Some failures will be your fault. Some will not. Some will cause you regret. Others not so much. Some will be big, some will be small. But every single failure has one thing in common: For those in Christ, it’s a means to an end.

Failure is suffering. The Bible does not promise escape from suffering. Instead, it promises that our suffering will produce something in us. It will produce steadfastness, making us more patient and non-anxious than we were before. It will produce fellowship with Jesus, helping us to know him a little more. It will produce a weight of glory, a mysterious delight that we will see clearly later. Suffering is never the end of the story. It is never the final chapter or the last word. Suffering, for those in Christ, always goes uphill.

To spend one’s life avoiding that suffering means to spend one’s life avoiding a glory that cannot come any other way. In Christ, life is laid out in front of you with success on one side and failure on the other, but both meet at the throne of God. Your heart may break. Your dreams may fail. Your hopes may be dashed. But you will only ever fall into the arms of mercy. Your life will never be wasted, your joy will never be empty, and your glory will never fade.