To fail is okay

When my twelfth-class board exams were a few months away, I was emotionally at a low point, through teenage identity crises and inner struggles of self-worth. I tried to soothe myself with self-pity that bordered on depression. That low mood kept me avoiding studies, which only made things worse, because impending academic failure made me feel more hopeless.

In parallel, it was also a time of meeting a small group of people at church who, firstly, accepted me as a person, and secondly, seemed to be on a spiritual walk (as ordinary young persons) that left me wondering what they had experienced that I had not. Good Friday and Jesus Christ meant something to them that I did not have any feeling for, although I was born in a ‘Christian’ family while some of them were not!

Over the months, it became clearer to me that following Jesus Christ was not a matter of birth, but of many choices – to admit to God’s existence and his sovereignty in defining right and wrong, and most difficult of all, to admit that Jesus Christ was the only being who claimed to offer forgiveness of sins, and to accept the incredible idea that his forgiveness should mean something to me. While on the one hand I was sceptical about these claims, on the other hand my inner void deepened – two seemingly independent dimensions. 

Eventually, I whispered a ‘Yes’ to my need for Jesus’s death to pay the penalty for my sins. (Good Friday reminds me of this every year). Amazingly, something changed on the other dimension as well, that is, my need to feel valued: my head and my heart were deeply moved by the sense that Jesus loves me. I passed the twelfth narrowly.

I found motivation to pursue goals (incidentally, through top institutes). Jesus’ rising from the dead, on Easter, reminds me that there is new life after social rejection – new successes, new failures too, yet all undergirded by Christ’s self-sacrificing love.

Jesus is proof that the God who “determines the number of the stars” also “heals the broken-hearted” (Psalm 147). M S Golwalkar writes of “the humanising influence of Christ”. From board exams to board rooms, tenderness is the hallmark of Christ. People may reject us, but the Heavenly Father says, “Try again!”