Failure: The Way Out

I vividly remember the last time I saw my grandfather alive.

He was in a hospital bed, half sitting-up against thin white pillows, his hand in my hand, his gaze locked on mine – tears in his eyes. I had an obligation to my job, my duty, my country. I had to fly back to Florida, back to work. But we both knew when I walked out of that room, it would be the end, the last time, the final goodbye. He didn’t want to let go of my hand. I didn’t want to let go, either. But eventually, I did. I had to. And that moment will mark me forever.

Falling Short

To be human is to fall short. Our world is built on mutual obligation, mutual dependence, and there’s just not enough time or effort to go around. We all make trade-offs; we cannot do all that is required all the time. That’s just a fact of life.

This was the great tragedy of the pagan world. To be an honorable man in the pagan world, you had to make and keep obligations. That is what honor was built on; it meant pledging your loyalty and then fulfilling those oaths. Only cowards refused to bind themselves to duty. But duties conflict and entrap us, and in the end, they break us.

The Ancients

This is what we see in Oedipus – Oedipus, who did the right thing, who killed the monster, married the queen, ruled the city justly, and sought out truth – Oedipus, who killed his father, married his mother, and cursed himself. This is the tragedy of Orestes, who had to kill his mother or leave his father’s blood unavenged. This is the tragedy of Balin and Balan, close brothers who pledge to fight for honor only to find themselves sworn to kill one another.

My favorite example is Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, based off the Roman tale. Coriolanus is the perfect Roman soldier, bold in his actions and unreserved in his commitment, but these very traits make the Romans dislike him, and they banish him. Accordingly, he turns his back on them, swearing loyalty to his former nemesis and marching with him to raze Rome. He swears he will maintain his resolve without mercy – and then his mother, his wife, and his son show up. Coriolanus’s story is a tragedy because he cannot bear the weight of his own character. By remaining true to himself, he breaks.

The Need for a New Way

This is the ancient tragedy. In our strength lies the seed of our destruction. The old way, where making obligations and keeping them was the way to be honorable, couldn’t work for us. The ancient philosophers have tried to unravel the labrynth of obligations, but the common people knew it was hopeless. We needed a success that came out of failure, a strength made perfect in weakness, a beauty that came out of brokenness. We needed a new way.

People in Jesus’ day and in ours ask why, if he came to save the world, Jesus didn’t come as a great champion. The answer is simple: that isn’t what we needed. If all Jesus did was come down and succeed where we fail, he would only be reinforcing our shortcomings. But he didn’t come to retell the old stories; he came to complete them. He came not to unravel our complicated obligations but to remove them. He came to cut the Gordian knot.

If God had wanted us to contribute to our own salvation, we would have ended up with something like Islam, where good deeds count for more than bad ones, but they have to balance out in the end. But God doesn’t save us through our successes. He saves us through our failure.

On Good Friday, we sank to the very depths of moral depravity. We took goodness itself and utterly destroyed it for the sake of destroying it – and we laughed as we did so. It was the darkest, most evil, most unredeemable thing we ever did. And it was this act God used to save us.

Rising Again

In doing so he made it absolutely clear that his love and his love alone is deeper than our deepest evil.  God’s love changes everything. In Christ, death becomes life. Weakness becomes strength. Vulnerability becomes power. Brokenness becomes beauty. he rose again.

That is the promise of Easter for us all.

“dallas signing.” by jason saul is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0