Yes, the title is WRONG. Call me old-fashioned, but, and God will agree with me on this, truth is truth. Right is right. And many "cute" ideas in ministry, education, media, and pop culture are counter-productive to the purpose we as adults have as it relates our kids.
We will be posting some ideas on this page related to children's minstry. And I will address why the title of this section is incorrect. Until then, I'll leave you to ruminate on it for a while.
Failure Isn't Fatal
IT’S NOT MY FAULT!!! As it turns out, it all goes back to high school. I played basketball all four years. And our team was awful. For three years I don’t think we ever lost by less than 30 points. We got drummed regularly. I think the Florida High School Athletic Association is to blame. They didn’t enact any laws to keep me from being embarrassed. They should have suspended the coaches of the other teams for beating us so bad. Maybe it was my coach’s fault. And the administration of my high school. They believed the education was more important than the athletics. So, when we got creamed, they didn’t blame the coach. The coach told us to keep making our best efforts, he didn’t overreact to losing.
But, you know what happened? In our senior year we won. And won a lot. And won big a lot. But more importantly, we had learned to endure the difficulty and persevere through trouble. A great lesson indeed.
It amazes me to hear such stories as the recent decision in Connecticut to suspend football coaches whose teams win by more than 50 points. What are they to do, start taking a knee in the 3rd quarter? For myself, if the opposing basketball teams had been forced to start playing four people, or giving the ball back if they didn’t score in 10 seconds (which might not had helped, come to think about it), or some such stuff as that, it would have been far more embarrassing than just losing.
In the Bible we are told that God instructed His people to teach their kids what they needed to know, in that case His Laws. He told them that is was the most important thing they could do as a society, apart from following Him. Almost the entire book of Proverbs is dedicated to trying to impart wisdom to the next generation.
If we keep our kids from experiencing a little failure, we do them a grave disservice. Failure at an age and under circumstances where that failure is not irreversible is a good thing. If we let them fail, when it won’t really hut them in the grand scheme of things, we teach them how to handle adversity and ultimately instruct them on how to succeed.
I am afraid though, that the rush to “protect” kids is really more about our egos than their psyche. I fear it is parents who don’t want to be embarrassed by their kids losing. And I know it can be school and district administrators who don’t want to see the “biggest losers” in their schools. Having been a public school teacher I have seen that first-hand. Although you will almost never get them to admit it in public. Instead, they do what Connecticut has done. Namely, they make pronouncements for “the best of the students”.
God knew better than that. In the portions of scriptures that chronicle the week of Easter, what we call the Passion Narratives, God tells us about the failure of Peter and the other Apostles. He didn’t keep them from failure, or try to sweep it under the rug. We are told that Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times. And we are also told that all the disciples abandoned Jesus at some point or another. And, after the crucifixion, we know that they were all together, hiding behind closed doors.
But Jesus wouldn’t let the failure stand. He didn’t keep them from failing, but He did use it to make them into the men and women He needed them to be. Three times He put Peter on the spot, asking him if he loved Him. Then, once Peter had learned the lesson through the failure, God could use him to preach the Gospel and see thousands of people “saved” at one time. And, in the process, begin the Christian church.
Failure isn’t fatal.
Hey, I got a great idea. How ‘bout we begin letting kids be kids again? And in the process we can instruct them in the most important lessons of all. How to handle it when not everything works out our way.
