Twenty-five years ago, Lyle Schaller told a group of ministers in North Carolina that if we wanted to stay conversant with what was happening in the country and also peek around the corner at what might be trending next, simply subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly. I took his advice and have been rewarded more times than not.
In the October issue of The Atlantic, as it’s now called, Liz Mundy writes about our cultural trend of fetishizing failure. In “Everyone Loves a Loser,” she argues for the growing trend toward embracing and even parading our deficiencies as part of self-help and leadership. Listen to the way we talk: “My bad … you win some, you lose some … epic fail … it’s on me.”
John Chandler
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Not only are our “flops, folds, setbacks, wipeouts and hiccups” a publishing phenomenon; celebrating them has also, she asserts, worked its way firmly into corporate culture and even “best-practice” parenting. Certainly it shows up in our politics, where Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, David Petraeus and Anthony Weiner have demonstrated a very un-Nixon-like tendency to stick around and profit after highly publicized failures. Mundy says, “Far from being a liability, failure — and humble emergence from failure as sadder, wiser, etc. — has become something to tout.” Even NASA now prefers to hire astronauts who have had setbacks rather than too-easy success.
One reason for this trend is that it aligns with the Great American Success Story. Our Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tales spring from our frontier mentality of pioneers overcoming obstacles on the pathway to success. The American cultural narrative loves a come-from-behind victory by over-achieving underdogs. And if you mess up? According to William and Mary professor Susan Wise Bauer in The Art of the Public Grovel, all you have to do is craft your apology carefully — and a nation stands quick to forgive.
Which brings us to the issue of forgiveness. We Christians are resurrection people, right? How should we react to addiction, bankruptcy, squandering and scandal? We believe in grace, right?
Here’s my take: failure in and of itself is not a moral good and is not to be celebrated. But failure overcome by redemption? That’s another story. And clarifying the gospel as a better story than making failure a fetish is a trend I’d like to see.
John Chandler (john.chandler@vbmb.org) is leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.org. Follow the Spence Network on Facebook and Twitter.