Silly Points of Note

No Fan of Failure or Fans of Failure

Why are there so many fans of failure?

"Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him" Isaiah 28:24-16

We will get back to the scripture above but let us continue with the leading question. I have a theory about this (why there are so many fans of failure). But before we delve into it, it would be nice to give a sense of what we want to talk about so that we’ll all be on the same page.

Failure is celebrated. There might have been a time when it was looked at with fear but someone somewhere, after having been dealt with by failure decided to start looking at it differently. Experience with failure made the person to make a 360 degree turn in his or her perception of failure and rather than call failure a foe, she or he decided to call it a friend. Rather than look at it as a bad thing, the person just decided to see it as a good thing.

He or she then went on to list why failure is a good thing and it did not take long for that list to become long. The next thing the person did was to air his or her views and because everyone else had been struggling with failure, they quickly bought the idea of embracing failure and this became a watershed, a true paradigm shift.

That person must have certainly made a fortune by selling the virtues of failure. I know this for a fact because he or she spawned thousands of disciples who have equally made their fortune out of this. Failure became a celebrity and this is where we are at as it concerns Mr. Failure. He is famous and celebrated.

There is practically no adult (that lives in a city or where there is any degree of human interaction with respect to climbing up the socio-commerce/economic/academic/every-other ladder) that will not be able to relate why failure can be a good thing and ‘indeed’ is a good thing. This takes us to the next thing; explaining why failure became a star and why there are so many fans of failure.

Failure became a star because man i.e. humanity simply got tired of fighting or being afraid of it. This goes back to that fabled person that just decided that he or she was tired of this seemingly eternal struggle with failure. Now you can tell the content on every book on failure; it will tell you why it is good and how you can tap into its immense treasures to become something great and achieve set goals.

Why did man fight failure in the first place?

Good question. Man fought failure because he just does not believe that there is anything that can be stronger, better than or best him. It must have been a shocking realization for the first human being that came across failure for the first time (I am a strong believer in there being a first and a last time for everything…under the sun).

It would have been a strange experience indeed (something that would be quite hard for us everyday folks to imagine since we drink, swim and eat failure). He or she must have tried to do something about it. He may have taken it lightly at first but would have been more shocked when failure did not budge. It would not have taken long for that person to realize that he or she had a fight in his or her hand and fight he or she did.

Man fought failure because at first, it was a strange experience. But it became a permanent feature, an enemy that was not going to die, leave or call it quits. Therefore, man coded it in his DNA to fight failure so that every other person would have it ingrained in them to fight failure. The first person that decided to embrace failure must have done a herculean task.

The fact is man cannot help but fight failure and even the embracing of failure is another form of fighting failure. The plainer truth is man’s sole objective is to overcome failure and if fighting it does not work then embracing it might just do the trick. This is why humanity has shifted into embracing failure because they have seen that the main objective can be attained adopting this strategy.

Now it might just be that there are one or two readers who are not getting this even though others have come to clearly understand what we are doing here. It is important we break it down for their sakes.

By fighting failure, we mean nobody wants to remain unsuccessful and would do everything in their power to turn the tide in their favor. By embracing failure, we mean adopting a tactics that makes you see the good side of failure or its benefits e.g. eliminating a wrong strategy, gaining experience, selling your experience of failure to others who would steer clear of it and just about anything that will make failure profitable.

Does it mean that embracing failure or becoming a fan of failure is a good thing?

What it does mean is that it underscores the reality of our human existence and tells us how bad things really went at the Garden of Eden when “the Flesh” was birthed in the first humans and failure, which is a child of the flesh came into existence.

It shows the desperation of our humanity and points to the eternal struggle man has with his Maker from the birth of the flesh in man. There is something really creepy at work in man that makes him fight against God even when that fight is not directly with God as it is in this case but indirectly because man’s fight with failure is indeed a failure to admit that humankind needs God.

But we can excuse the world (this is where we start switching to full spiritual mode). We can excuse the world because man knows nothing else but to stand against the face of the reality of his failings. There is something at work in man that makes him a victim and this is why The Man Christ Jesus came around. He “needed, not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 2:25). It will be almost impossible for man to give up on himself unless God works it in him to come to his knees.

We are still attempting to answer the question of whether embracing failure is a good thing. We have just gotten to the point where we are ‘excusing’ those “without” (borrowed that from Apostle Paul I think, meaning those who are yet to come into the light of Christ). What was deposited in man that spawned what is now spiritually called “the flesh” has made man to walk the blind path of the devil ( and the devil’s path is indeed pathetic because he is set on the course of destruction without any recourse).

As it has to do with mankind that missed it in Adam, embracing failure is just about the only way they can ‘overcome’ failure (the fact is no man can overcome failure in the real sense of the word because failure is not just imputed in man but it is a living everyday reality as man walks in the course of the flesh). Mankind has come to discover that embracing failure in this manner is an effective way of not just overcoming failure as man has come to define the concept of overcoming failure but of saying to God that man can live and survive without Him.

Life is still about proving to God that man can do without Him

However, if this can be explained and ‘excused’ with man that is still in the bondage of his adamic state, the same cannot be said of man that has ‘discarded’ that adamic state to accept Christ’s grace. A silly point of note here could be that no man is without his or her adamic nature. The difference with those with Christ’s grace is that His Spirit lives in and with them and they have the chance to walk in the Spirit if they so choose.

"Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him" Isaiah 28:24-16

This makes the person with the Spirit more accountable in everything but particularly with dealing with failure. The man that walks in and with the Spirit will have no need to embrace failure in the course of dealing with it. In fact, you will never fail as long as you walk in the Spirit. You will not need to repeat anything 999 times before getting it the 1000th time.

The greater your walk in and with the Spirit, the closer to reality this experience of never having anything to do with failure will be to you as a person. Indeed the scripture tells of people who were so in tune with the Spirit of God, that they already knew how an endeavor would pan out before they started, even those that would end in seeming failure. You do not need to be part of those that celebrate failure, one way or the other. Life in the Spirit is a completely different walk that can be adapted to our everyday living.