Article August 27, 2012 Issue

Ditch failure!

Mark Pierce

It’s tempting to think we’re living in a world of failure when we see governments stagnating, economies plummeting, and people not finding work. But does God know failure? And is that really His will for His loved creation, including man?

For a long time, I thought failure was part of my character and a theme running through my life. In my senior year of high school, I even wrote a paper suggesting that we have to befriend failure, since it seemed like such an inescapable outcome. Those words followed me around for years, as I faced stressful relationships, sporadic employment, and difficult financial challenges. I even felt that, despite being a student of Christian Science, I could only hope for healing, because I was sure I was a pretty lousy student of this Science and never felt I could fully understand or practice it. 

Something needed to change. When I lost my job yet again in the recent past, I feared that my “life history of failure” was repeating itself. After not finding adequate work for several months, I realized that I had actually been expecting my job search would be unsuccessful and giving in to the belief that I could become defeated and worthless. After much prayer, and with the support of a Christian Science practitioner, I realized I didn’t have to take on negativity as part of my identity any longer, since God never made me that way. 