Failing to Peace
When interviewing for jobs people compile resumes that feature their career highlights, focusing on their many successes. Promotions are featured. Rewards are delineated. Missteps are reframed. Brief tenures are deleted. A recent The New York Times article suggests that we would be better served, and grow and learn even more, if we also tallied a failure resume.
Tim Herrera writes:
Could these biblical chapters serve David’s failure resume? Or is this instead the mark of great literature? And yet we learn more from David’s sins than from his many successes. Do his military victories offer us instruction or instead this moment when he acknowledges his wrongs? Our heroes are fallible. They are often quite ordinary and frequently all too human. That is how we learn from Bible. That is how we grow from their example.
Moses is given to anger. God can at times appear vengeful. So too is each and every person. The Bible’s failures are our greatest teachings.
Another frequently cited example. The Torah’s stated goal of bringing the Jewish people to the land of Israel is never achieved. Moses dies, and the Torah concludes, before our ancestors cross over the Jordan River. Is this also a catastrophic failure or like each and every person’s life? Who achieves all their goals? A lifetime is never really enough. Who achieves only success after success, strung one after the other as if in a finely polished resume?
Our lives offer many failures. Examine them. Recount them. And grow from them.
Even the Torah’s successes are nearly failures. Yes, the Jewish people are indeed freed from Egyptian slavery, but it takes ten attempts to convince Pharaoh to let them go. (Is God learning on the job?) And then, soon after gaining their freedom and while waiting for Moses to return from communing with God, the people grow impatient and build an idol. Rather than discouraging them, Aaron tells them to bring him their gold and silver. (Exodus 32)
I imagine a job interview. “Aaron, you apparently feel you are ready to take on a more decisive leadership role. Tell us about that time Moses left you in charge for forty days.” Aaron reframes the episode. He casts it as a success. “The people were on the verge of rioting. They were scared. We were in the middle of the desert. We had little food and water. Moses went off to do one of his ‘I need to talk with God for a few days.’ After a few weeks I decided to refocus the people’s attention so they would not kill each other. Better to give them something to build, I decided.”
The rabbis agree with Aaron’s retelling. They advise: “Be of the disciples of Aaron loving peace and pursuing it.” (Avot 1). Aaron concludes the interview. “It was then that I realized my greatest skill. I am a peacemaker.” Is this week’s Golden Calf episode a failure? Or a success?
Is peace a failure? Perhaps that is the secret. Peace is the recognition that a long hoped for goal will not be achieved (100% security!?), and that our failure to reach that once all-important objective, must be reframed as a success.
We edit our story. The Torah concludes. We refashion our goals. The rabbis imagine. “Enough of blood and tears.”
Is compromise a failure? Aaron thinks not. Others think so.
Is peace a failure? Perhaps it must be. Still it is a resume I dream of reading.
Our failures are not derailments. They are instead opportunities.
Tim Herrera writes:
Keeping a failure resume — or Anti‑Portfolio or CV of Failures or whatever you’d like to call it — is simple: When you fail, write it down. But instead of focusing on how that failure makes you feel, take the time to step back and analyze the practical, operational reasons that you failed. Did you wait until the last minute to work on it? Were you too casual in your preparation? Were you simply out of your depth? There are countless things that can go wrong when we’re trying to accomplish our goals or advance our careers. But those things are opportunities, not derailments.I wonder. Perhaps the entire Bible should be viewed as a failure resume. A favorite example. The greatest king, David, has an affair with Bathsheba. When he discovers she has become pregnant, David has her husband Uriah, a loyal army officer, killed. The prophet Nathan confronts David and exposes his sin. King David acknowledges his misdeeds and repents. It is a surprising act—powerful leaders rarely admit their errors.
Could these biblical chapters serve David’s failure resume? Or is this instead the mark of great literature? And yet we learn more from David’s sins than from his many successes. Do his military victories offer us instruction or instead this moment when he acknowledges his wrongs? Our heroes are fallible. They are often quite ordinary and frequently all too human. That is how we learn from Bible. That is how we grow from their example.
Moses is given to anger. God can at times appear vengeful. So too is each and every person. The Bible’s failures are our greatest teachings.
Another frequently cited example. The Torah’s stated goal of bringing the Jewish people to the land of Israel is never achieved. Moses dies, and the Torah concludes, before our ancestors cross over the Jordan River. Is this also a catastrophic failure or like each and every person’s life? Who achieves all their goals? A lifetime is never really enough. Who achieves only success after success, strung one after the other as if in a finely polished resume?
Our lives offer many failures. Examine them. Recount them. And grow from them.
Even the Torah’s successes are nearly failures. Yes, the Jewish people are indeed freed from Egyptian slavery, but it takes ten attempts to convince Pharaoh to let them go. (Is God learning on the job?) And then, soon after gaining their freedom and while waiting for Moses to return from communing with God, the people grow impatient and build an idol. Rather than discouraging them, Aaron tells them to bring him their gold and silver. (Exodus 32)
I imagine a job interview. “Aaron, you apparently feel you are ready to take on a more decisive leadership role. Tell us about that time Moses left you in charge for forty days.” Aaron reframes the episode. He casts it as a success. “The people were on the verge of rioting. They were scared. We were in the middle of the desert. We had little food and water. Moses went off to do one of his ‘I need to talk with God for a few days.’ After a few weeks I decided to refocus the people’s attention so they would not kill each other. Better to give them something to build, I decided.”
The rabbis agree with Aaron’s retelling. They advise: “Be of the disciples of Aaron loving peace and pursuing it.” (Avot 1). Aaron concludes the interview. “It was then that I realized my greatest skill. I am a peacemaker.” Is this week’s Golden Calf episode a failure? Or a success?
Is peace a failure? Perhaps that is the secret. Peace is the recognition that a long hoped for goal will not be achieved (100% security!?), and that our failure to reach that once all-important objective, must be reframed as a success.
We edit our story. The Torah concludes. We refashion our goals. The rabbis imagine. “Enough of blood and tears.”
Is compromise a failure? Aaron thinks not. Others think so.
Is peace a failure? Perhaps it must be. Still it is a resume I dream of reading.
Our failures are not derailments. They are instead opportunities.