On Human Failure
In my last post I made a valiant, if naïve, attempt to jump-start the blog via my reading list. It should be fairly obvious that this attempt has failed. It’s not that I haven’t tried—I’m still valiantly slogging my way through The Origin of the Species—but I clearly haven’t kept up. Promises are easy to make, but hard to keep.
Any person familiar with addiction will know exactly the sort of failure here, though often on a far more devastating level. We have a tendency as humans to make great promises to ourselves and fall sadly short. (We fail at promises to others too, but the root of the problem is when we don’t live up to our own expectations. With others, there is at least the hope of accountability.)
This could easily turn into a philosophical or theological discussion involving the fallibility of human nature, the problem of temptation, and the failings of the human soul. Without time to run down those rabbit trails this morning, I’ll simply lay out a few suggestions for your mind to wander upon:
- The problem of motivation and how to overcome it. Ideas that follow thereupon.
- The possibility of self-accountability. Oxymoron or will of steel?
- Stories from childhood of broken promises.
- Actions which cause a diminishing faith in humanity.*
- The covenant God makes Abraham in Genesis 15. A one-way promise from God to man; there could be no human failure, because only God was bound.
That will do for now. I leave you to your thoughts.
* Incidentally, another post I told myself I would publish and never did. A few years ago a man stopped me, asking for $40 to get to his dieing dad in another state. In the back of my mind I knew it was a con, but he was very convincing. When he gave me his cell number, I agreed to loan him the money, telling him that “if you’re tricking me, I lose a little faith in humanity.” Needless to say, I’ve lost a little faith in humanity. I still call the number he gave me now and then, though, and leave a message asking how he’s doing.
