My eyes were tearing up. As I listened to the instructor evaluate my very last assignment of the year, a painful reality set in. I had failed. I had two goals for the assignment, and given the instructor’s evaluation, it appeared I had failed at both. “I think you did,” he confirmed.
Those words cut deep. This experience was more painful than when I broke my collarbone, or tore my acl. It was more painful than any physical pain I have had to endure.
Failure hurts. This experience left me with some important questions. Why did it hurt so much? And how can I avoid this type of pain?
Naturally, we seek quick solutions to relieve pain. Instead of dealing with the causes, we try to patch up the effects. Many have dulled their emotions because they are afraid of this kind of pain. But I knew that was Satan’s solution, not God’s. God warns against those who are “past feeling” (Ephesians 4:19), those that “have made their faces harder than a rock” (Jeremiah 5:3).
To answer those questions truthfully, we must understand both the causes for pain and sorrow, as well as the causes for abundant joy! The Bible’s teaching on this subject is astounding.
Why It Hurts?
There was a reason this particular failure hurt so much. It will explain both the cause of pain, as well as the cause for joy, because joy and pain are connected.
The reason this experience was so painful to me, was because I was invested. I had gone through a year of this education, and had really come to see the value of this course at Herbert W. Armstrong College. By the end of the year, I had a strong desire to succeed. I prayed about the assignment long and hard; I wanted to make sure I had God’s will on this last opportunity. Then I worked on it feverishly. With this level of commitment, the crushing news that I had failed shattered my stoic defenses—tears started welling in my eyes.
It takes commitment to experience pain, but the same can be said for joy. I can only imagine the scenario playing itself out slightly differently; if instead of failure, I had achieved success, I would’ve been elated beyond words to describe! The greater our commitment, the more devastating a failure, but also the more joyous a success.
Christ himself was a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), but He also had full joy! (John 15:11). This seems paradoxical, but once you understand the causes of joy and of pain, it makes sense.
Failure causes pain, and success causes joy. Of course, Christ himself was not a failure, so why did He experience pain and sorrow? The story of Lazarus helps us understand. This story contains a commonly misunderstood scripture—the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35). Gerald Flurry writes in John’s Gospel—The Love of God: “Surrounded by people who were weeping, Christ wept. But He was weeping over something far different from what they were: He wept because they didn’t believe—and they should have!”
Christ was intensely emotional about their failure in faith. Verse 33 says He groaned in the spirit. This was an intensely painful experience for Christ. It was not painful because of His own failure, but because the faith of those around him was failing. Christ is deeply emotional about our failures because He is fully committed to our success.
Jeremiah gives us a vivid picture of the kind of pain he experienced on behalf of Israel. He exclaims: “My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace” (Jeremiah 4:19). It physically hurt Jeremiah to see where Israel’s failure to obey would lead. Mr. Flurry comments in the Jeremiah booklet: “What is coming upon Israel was acutely painful to Jeremiah; and it’s even more painful for God’s true Church today.” In fact, this pain drove Jeremiah to commit himself even further to God’s Work. He felt he could not remain quiet.
“Yes, I know how Jeremiah felt!” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1955, “Do you think I can keep silent, today? God has revealed to me your danger! I can also see your lethargy. And I look over this doomed world, and I can find no other man shouting this warning of God!” This pain that Mr. Armstrong felt only drove him to greater commitment to warning this dying world. It was almost as if he had to make up for the emotional content that the rest of the world lacked. The whole of society was gripped by a spirit of apathy.
A Pandemic of Apathy
The spirit of apathy is even stronger today. Cambridge Dictionary defines “apathy” as a “behavior that shows no interest or energy and shows that someone is unwilling to take action, especially over something important.”
Webster’s Dictionary says it is a lack of feeling or emotion.
Apathy is often a response to anxiety or fear. There are a lot of things to be fearful of in this world. Evils are mounting. The nuclear threat that looms above our heads becomes greater with each passing day. The news is filled with horrors of rioting and crime. Natural disasters and disease cause widespread suffering across the planet. Terror organizations rain death and torture on whom they can. In general, there is a lot of pain in this world, and no feasible solutions have been implemented. Our natural tendency is to disengage from this sharp reality, and become hardened to its horrors.
This attitude also rubs off on people’s personal lives. A statistic from 2013 found that over 40 percent of high school students are “chronically disengaged” from school (Forbes.com, March 13, 2013). Even worse, a 2024 study found that 85 percent of employees worldwide feel disengaged at work (Teamstage.io/motivation-statistics). This pandemic of apathy, according to Gallup.com, is costing companies an estimated $8.8 trillion annually.
Sadly, a lot of the people who read statistics like this will simply shrug and continue with their lives. They will continue to ignore the news, work jobs they don’t care for, build shallow friendships and raise children they don’t really love.
In general, it’s just easier if you don’t have to care. If you aren’t committed to your education, your job, your friends, or your family, you may avoid some of the pain associated with failure. When you fail the last assignment of the year, you can just shake it off. When you don’t meet a deadline at work, or you’ve offended a friend, you more easily convince yourself that it is totally fine. You don’t care anyways. But without commitment, success is just happenstance, and it never lasts.
The result of this pandemic of apathy is a collapsing society. Moreover, threats to the world as we know it are accumulating. Iran is building a nuclear bomb? Shrug. China is slowly superseding America’s naval presence in the South China Sea? Shrug again. Germany is rearming? Good, let them deal with an aggressive Russia.When we fail to address these problems, they will culminate in our destruction. Will America shrug when the nukes finally start flying?
Clearly apathy is not the solution; it worsens the problem. This was one of the things Jeremiah was so emotional about: the people were completely apathetic to God’s correction. He cries out to God: “thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, butthey have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return” (Jeremiah 5:3). The only solution to mankind’s mounting problems is their repentance (e.g. Jeremiah 18:7-8), but the surge of apathy we are witnessing is preventing that very thing.
An Opportunity for Change
The pain that results from failure should produce repentance. When we fail, there is a cause for that failure. If we just numb ourselves to the pain, we won’t stop failing, we’ll just stop feeling.
A common defense mechanism against our negative emotions is just to laugh at our failures. This can be a form of apathy. “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better” (Ecclesiastes 7:3). Laughing at our problems is not a solution.
The only way to make your heart better in the long run, is with true remorse. It may be good to leave these emotions behind closed doors under certain circumstances, but it is dangerous to numb ourselves against this kind of pain altogether.
Really, when we are faced with the pain of failure, we often have two options. We can either resolve to make the changes that are needed in order to avoid future failure, or we can suppress our emotions. Which option leads to long-term success? In this light, we can look at pain as an opportunity to change. It is like a loving father giving correction to his children It will sting for a little bit, but if the children respond, they will be much better off. The longer it takes to respond, the more correction has to follow, and the more hardened the child becomes to correction. The loving father, with pain in his heart, will have to administer more severe punishment.
The End of Pain
How much more enjoyable the experience for all involved when we respond to pain the right way. One thing that helped me process the pain from failing my last assignment was God’s loving government. My instructor saw how much this failure impacted me and waited around to talk with me after class. He encouraged me to keep working at it. He had already given me the chance to redo the assignment, to grow from this experience. He also reminded me of all the future opportunities for growth that were still ahead of me, and how ultimately success with these types of assignments was a vital quality needed in the World Tomorrow. Ultimately, he gave me hope.
This hope encouraged me to make the right choice. Instead of dulling my senses, I focused on making changes. Ultimately, this failure was merely a boost that I needed in a lifetime of growth. How big a difference the right authority makes!
I could’ve told you a very similar story, going back to my youth. I really wanted to play violin, but in the eyes of my music teacher I was a failure, and instead of encouraging me to do better, she discouraged me from continuing. I quit violin, and I numbed my emotions.
With this failed assignment at college, though, came many lessons. One of the great lessons I learned is what Paul expresses in 2 Corinthians 1:24. Those God has set in authority are the helpers of our joy. They point us to the way that leads to ultimate success.
Ultimately, they point us to the way that will remove all pain and sorrow. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).