Good News - We're Failures!

         One week of introductory lectures have passed and beginning to dig deeper into the content and texts that I will be studying, I sense a kind of pressure in lecture theatres where everyone is furiously taking down notes and trying to capture each word that issues from the mouth of the lecturer – be it a quote from a scholar, a passage from the text or the lecturer’s own analysis of ideas and synthesis of arguments.

         There is a weight that burdens our shoulders and bogs down our minds – the mad desire to succeed. Just like Arthurian knights who refuse to cower in the face of adversity, regardless of the odds stacked against them, simply because they seek to win glory, honour and a beautiful maiden’s hand, I see about 200 little knights embarking on our own adventures to win acclaim and recognition. Failing is not an option, to lose a joust is to earn shame, and usually it is the bad guy that loses and the noble knight emerges victorious. Well, most of the time.

          Vicariously we are living in the Age of Chivalry. Failing a test or exam is akin to submitting to a better knight, not being able to contribute ideas in a tutorial could be similar to a knight not being able to defend the honour and chastity of the maiden he is escorting. There is immense pressure to prove oneself to be the best knight that unconsciously, one compares oneself to others and a silent ‘tournament’ ensues on the battlefield within our hearts.

           Defeated knights are often chucked into a corner and later unheard – as though cast away by society. Isn’t this the same with the modern world? Someone isn’t worth our time if he or she doesn’t ‘succeed’ in his or her ‘quest’.

          But news of our failure isn’t bad – it is good! In fact, we have failed to live up to an even higher standard – a standard beyond the modern reinvention of the chivalric code of honour. This bar is set and dictated by God Himself who is the reality of perfection. Chretien de Troyes writes that ‘largesse alone makes one a worthy man, not high birth, courtesy, wisdom, gentility, riches, strength, chivalry, boldness, power, beauty, or any other gift.’ God who in His generosity, his largesse ‘blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’ (Eph 1:3b). Us, who were men and women living as enemies of God – we who wished God dead and lived as though He were dead!

          We have failed to conduct ourselves to the code of conduct God instructed us to abide as his subjects, but the good news is that it is in our inability to earn the prize, our helplessness in dealing with our quest to earn God’s approval that God, through Jesus’ blood gave us redemption and the forgiveness of our trespasses.

          This means we don’t have to undergo the impossible journey of finding favour with God through our own strengths and merits, neither do we need to prove ourselves to this world that we are worthy men or women. Jesus has completed that quest when he hung in utter shame on the cross, derided and mocked by those he came to rescue; so that now in him, we are adopted into God’s family and will one day be assured of sharing his glory if we are continually trusting him. What manner of honour and glory can this world offer that could surpass or merely equal that weight of glory? I dare say none.

          There is so much more worth in being called God’s child then to graduate with a first.

          So what happens the next time I have angst about success and failures? I have to remember that it is good news! Because Jesus succeeded for me.