Monday, November 24, 2008
On Failure
As this is published, I am in the middle of what I hope is the last day of a long trail of days dealing with issues related to my internet. For the third time in nine months a certain company, a certain very large company named with initials that sound like a guy with a slight stutter at the end of very short words, has attempted to "upgrade" my services only to produce results to the contrary. The first two times, after countless hours of my having to push the system, the problems were eventually resolved. In this latest incident the problem has never resolved after 3 weeks and to just put the perfect punctuation point on it, they failed to meet the agreed to timetable to restore the old service.
When I received this last bit of news it came with what had become the usual, and by this point completely intolerable, set of "reasons" and at best prevarications, if not out right lies, in a effort to justify failure. I explained to the gentleman that was supposed to be "helping" me, patiently for a moment, but very impatiently as the excuse talk continued, that I was no longer interested in "reasons" or issues. I explained to him that in no uncertain terms AT&T, and him, had failed to deliver, repeatedly, on the product promised. I knew he worked very hard, but he had worked very hard AT FAILING. Every mention of the word "fail," "failure" or similar was met with a "but," until finally I shouted - "NO BUTS - YOU FAILED!"
Now, in some sense the gentleman was not to blame, he was straddled with an impenetrable bureaucracy and an impossibly large network trying to find one small fault. Technically it is an entirely different division than his to restore the old service. In some sense he was not fully equipped to solve the problem - which is AT&T's fault, not his - but he is the public face of AT&T to me, and he was responsible to me for delivering the product. AT&T's failure, was, as far as I am concerned HIS failure.
(Final parenthetical note - If you do not now do business with AT&T I recommend avoiding it. When things settle down here and I have a bit of time on my hands, you can look for my services - land phone, internet connection, web hosting, and wireless both voice and internet - to move to other providers. When improvements only create problems that cannot be solved, well there has to be a better way to do things.)
This made me think about the church, and ourselves as Christians. Prior to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection we lacked to tools to "deliver the product." That is to say that without the cleansing work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit could not enter us and we could not be transformed into the people, and the group of people (the church) that God intended for us to be. We were failing. And, of course, the Jewish people bore the greatest burden of this failure becasue they were the public face of God to the world.
But now we have all the capabilities and powers that we need at our disposal. Christ has been here, His work here is complete. And yet the failure continues. The Jewish people are no longer the face of God to the world, WE ARE! And we are failing as miserably as they did.
"Oh but John," comes the retort, "the church is made up of sinners." Well, not precisely - the church is made of of people who are supposed to have appropriated the grace, salvation and transformation offered by Christ and the Holy Spirit. But we are failing. Again I hear, "But we have done so much that is good." Well, indeed, we have worked very hard as a church universal and much of what we have done has been fruitful, but we have still failed. A third time a response comes, "Well, John it is not really our job to change the world, it is God's." Truth there, but we are His instruments for executing that change and we are failing to be effective instruments!
Like the AT&T man we keep talking about what we are doing and how hard we are working, but we refuse to look at the fact that despite all that hard work and effort WE ARE FAILING! Which means we are not doing things the way we should be - something is wrong - priests are molesting boys, prominent pastors are having affairs and doing drugs, the disenfranchised come to us in their loneliness only to be further disenfranchised, in a world of abundance, people starve, the church is hated because when we take a stand on our morality we are unable to communicate Christ's love at the same time. WE ARE FAILING!
Can we start with that fact? Can we let that fact sink in, break us, hurt us, force us towards God? Can we stop making excuses and say, simply, meaningfully, "WE HAVE FAILED."
Until we do we will simply, and UNmeaningfully, continue to fail.
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When I received this last bit of news it came with what had become the usual, and by this point completely intolerable, set of "reasons" and at best prevarications, if not out right lies, in a effort to justify failure. I explained to the gentleman that was supposed to be "helping" me, patiently for a moment, but very impatiently as the excuse talk continued, that I was no longer interested in "reasons" or issues. I explained to him that in no uncertain terms AT&T, and him, had failed to deliver, repeatedly, on the product promised. I knew he worked very hard, but he had worked very hard AT FAILING. Every mention of the word "fail," "failure" or similar was met with a "but," until finally I shouted - "NO BUTS - YOU FAILED!"
Now, in some sense the gentleman was not to blame, he was straddled with an impenetrable bureaucracy and an impossibly large network trying to find one small fault. Technically it is an entirely different division than his to restore the old service. In some sense he was not fully equipped to solve the problem - which is AT&T's fault, not his - but he is the public face of AT&T to me, and he was responsible to me for delivering the product. AT&T's failure, was, as far as I am concerned HIS failure.
(Final parenthetical note - If you do not now do business with AT&T I recommend avoiding it. When things settle down here and I have a bit of time on my hands, you can look for my services - land phone, internet connection, web hosting, and wireless both voice and internet - to move to other providers. When improvements only create problems that cannot be solved, well there has to be a better way to do things.)
This made me think about the church, and ourselves as Christians. Prior to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection we lacked to tools to "deliver the product." That is to say that without the cleansing work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit could not enter us and we could not be transformed into the people, and the group of people (the church) that God intended for us to be. We were failing. And, of course, the Jewish people bore the greatest burden of this failure becasue they were the public face of God to the world.
But now we have all the capabilities and powers that we need at our disposal. Christ has been here, His work here is complete. And yet the failure continues. The Jewish people are no longer the face of God to the world, WE ARE! And we are failing as miserably as they did.
"Oh but John," comes the retort, "the church is made up of sinners." Well, not precisely - the church is made of of people who are supposed to have appropriated the grace, salvation and transformation offered by Christ and the Holy Spirit. But we are failing. Again I hear, "But we have done so much that is good." Well, indeed, we have worked very hard as a church universal and much of what we have done has been fruitful, but we have still failed. A third time a response comes, "Well, John it is not really our job to change the world, it is God's." Truth there, but we are His instruments for executing that change and we are failing to be effective instruments!
Like the AT&T man we keep talking about what we are doing and how hard we are working, but we refuse to look at the fact that despite all that hard work and effort WE ARE FAILING! Which means we are not doing things the way we should be - something is wrong - priests are molesting boys, prominent pastors are having affairs and doing drugs, the disenfranchised come to us in their loneliness only to be further disenfranchised, in a world of abundance, people starve, the church is hated because when we take a stand on our morality we are unable to communicate Christ's love at the same time. WE ARE FAILING!
Can we start with that fact? Can we let that fact sink in, break us, hurt us, force us towards God? Can we stop making excuses and say, simply, meaningfully, "WE HAVE FAILED."
Until we do we will simply, and UNmeaningfully, continue to fail.
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