c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Let’s hear it for failure.

Let’s hear it for the high school senior who didn’t make it into a first-choice college and maybe learned a lesson about trying harder when it counted.

Let’s hear it for the aspiring physician who bombed in medical school and maybe learned that “party hearty” wasn’t an adequate game plan.

Let’s hear it for the salespersons who didn’t make the sale because they under-prepared; and the company that went bankrupt because its products were sub-par; and the technology high-flier that lost altitude because it stopped innovating; and the church that had to cut staff because it got stuck on admiring yesterday and failed to work hard today.

Maybe they learned something.

So, perhaps, did the couple who tried to run a marriage on autopilot and crashed. And the corporate slacker who got pink-slipped. And the drunk who lost a family. And the SUV owner who gags at $80 fill-ups. And the politician whose cover-up fooled no one.

Failure is a far better teacher than success. Facing consequences is better than avoiding them. Learning from experience is better than denial.

So I say to the “helicopter parent” who wrote her son’s college-admission essay, hovered obsessively when he enrolled and tried to protect him from failure so that he could enjoy the privileges of the childhood home: your son dropped out because he couldn’t make it on his own. Making it on one’s own means failing, again and again, learning from failure, becoming strong through adversity. Now his learning can begin _ if you will let him be.

I say to the families of Duke University students whose lawyers are publicly trashing a young woman in Durham, N.C., so their sons can escape the risks of a rape trial: what lesson are you teaching your boys? “Money talks” is a lousy lesson. “Life has consequences” would serve them better.

There is no shame in failure. Even the best baseball hitter fails two times in three. The path to learning a musical instrument is a cacophony of screeches, missed notes, sloppy tempos and lazy practice. The drive to excel comes from overcoming failure, not from easy success.

Our political leaders seem desperate to avoid even the appearance of failure. How else can they grow in their jobs? Who trusts a leader who cannot try, fail, learn and grow?

Parents seem desperate to protect their children from the failure that might ensue from standing on their own. Youth sports have become a nightmare of over-involved parents hectoring coaches and referees. One parent of a young musician climbs on stage during rehearsals to conduct her child’s playing. A college official in Texas says, “Parents are even going with their children to job interviews after they graduate from college. What happens when Mom and Dad die?”

What is the consequence of such hovering? A lifetime of weakness, low self-confidence and fear.

I see this flight from failure especially in churches. When membership declines began in the mid-1960s, mainline denominations ignored the losses, then used them for political fodder, then blamed them on low-life competitors, and then hid from consequences by spending endowment. Now they are trying to market their way out of despondency with ads that show no lessons learned.

Failure is painful, no question about it. But until we try hard enough to risk failure _ until we allow our children to fail, until we break through denial and experience actual consequences _ we learn too little to be healthy, effective and, yes, truly successful.

KRE/JL END EHRICH

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org)