SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

I have never placed much stock in fate. Most of what happens to us is the result of free will. Yes, we are all born with genes and chromosomes that have a profound effect on who we are, what we look like, even our moods and dispositions. Children of alcoholics are prone to alcoholism: it is in the genes. Homosexuality is genetic. Heterosexuality is too. Depression, it seems, can be passed on from parent to child.

We are not in control of everything. We are not under the control of everything either. The tendency of human nature is to blame our failings and shortcomings on someone or something else: our parents, our genes, even the devil. On the other hand, when we accomplish something that is laudable, we want to accept total credit rather than to be thankful for our parents, our genetic makeup or even our God. Fate was the root cause of the bad; free will was the root cause of the good.

Michael Ignatieff: "We would rather believe that it could not have happened otherwise than to entertain the still more agonizing thought that it need not have happened at all. It is false comfort to believe that cruelty [for instance] is human destiny, when in truth it is human failure."

No one of us likes to fail. We take failure personally. If we can pass off the blame for our failure on fate ("it could not have happened otherwise"), then, perhaps, we can sleep better at night. But if we have to accept the fact that failure is often the result of our free will ("human failure"), we tend to toss and turn in our sleep – and well we should.

The acceptance of human failure, human frailty, the acknowledgement that we are not all powerful, almighty, is at least the first step on the road to recovering some sense of responsibility of the messes we make in our lives and the messes we help create in this world. It is not a pleasant thought to realize that we have no one else to blame – like society; and nothing else to blame – like our genes; not a very pleasant thought indeed!

The second step is to acknowledge that just because we are somewhat less than perfect, we are still not allowed to settle for imperfection. My children, and I as a child, use and used that as an excuse to lessen responsibility. It does not, but we give it a good try. And if the truth be known, I still find myself, at times, settling for less than the best from myself.

Jesus's expectations of us and we of ourselves is a striving for perfection. For that to begin to happen, we first have to accept responsibility for our own actions and not blame them on someone or something else. The second step is to realize that we need help in becoming better/perfect. We need Someone and other someones to help us. We cannot do it alone.

The irony of life, I think, is that while we often fail all on our own, we never succeed all on our own. We don't need anyone's help to fail. We need all kinds of help to succeed, to be the person God wants us to be. We probably should spend less time looking for someone to blame when we fail and more time looking for someone to help us so that we don’t fail in the first place. That help is all around.