About half of my time is spent in a lab handling things that are toxic and transferring very small amounts of liquid from a vial to a plate - 96 times per plate multiple times a day. It is repeating, repeating and repeating things to have statistical significance and half of the time not have any idea what the heck is going on.
This is how a series of bad experiments over the last seven months, a lot of uncertainty regarding the future and a few other issues culminated in the rather pathetic (if not comical) sight of me walking down the darkened road, in the rain, at 9.30 pm after 12 hours doing experiments that never worked, while water soaked into my bones in the cold - the weather only adding to make me very frustrated and angry with the powers that be.
Buried in a hole I dug for myself of self-pity, frustration and immature ranting, I couldn't help but wonder: what's the point of all of this? What good do the prestigious titles of 'neuroscientist' and 'master' do when I am literally trying to figure out why a particular chemical that only half a dozen people in the world care about reacts in such an inconsistent, chaotic way with my cells? What is the whole divine purpose of this nonsense? Why have I been weak after weak facing so many nasty uncertainties and issues? Am I being foolish trying to find a higher cosmic meaning in my small stupid first world problems? After all, what is my purpose if this is how I spend my days? In fact...what is my purpose at all?
A quiet statement silenced my mind and halted my rant suddenly:
"Your purpose is to glorify Me. And you can do that in failure as much as in success."
This was a very revolutionary thought. Can I glorify God in failure? How? Doesn't everyone always pray for the church event to 'be a success for God's glory'? Or for so and so to be 'healed for God's glory'? Isn't God only 'blessing', 'working', showing his love and glory when the sick child is healed, the meal is provided in the time of hunger and when thousands of a random village in the back of the bush accept him due to the work of missionaries? How can God possibly be glorified when things look like they have... well, gone perfectly wrong?
I thought about Jesus' ministry: people questioning him because of his humble social-economic background (Matthew 13.55, Mark 6.3), calling him a glutton and a drunkard, friend of sinners and traitors (Matthew 11.19, Luke 7.34), plotting to kill him and trying to stone him (John 8.59, 10.31), trying to push him off a cliff (Luke 4.29), pleading that Jesus will leave their town (Mark 5.17), religious leaders plotting to kill him (Matthew 12.14, Mark 3.6, John 11.45-57), and ultimately was betrayed by one of his closest friends (Luke 22), his own people pleaded for him to executed (Luke 23.21) and for a thief to be released instead of him (Matthew 27.21).
For someone that wanted to bring God's love and salvation to people, that sounds like a pretty terrible ministry. Probably if he were a missionary and kept bringing back these stories of failure no one would want to support him.
And yet God says he is well pleased with Jesus (Mark 1.11, Matthew 3.17, Luke 3.22), he fulfilled what he was supposed to fulfil (Matthew 1.21) and God exalted him (Philippians 2.9).
Wait... what?
Prosperity gospel is the belief that God will bless you with health, wealth and other earthly blessings and, though not all churches claim to be aligned with that line of thought, it seems that the general concept of God blessing us with earthly concepts of success has slowly permeated Christianity. Perhaps it is some sort of Newtonian concept of thinking good actions result in good reactions from the universe, perhaps it is some form of trying to make Karma theological. Maybe it is the influence of capitalism and the trading assets and benefits. But Christianity sometimes looks like a bargain to some people: if I am a 'good' person, therefore God should allow good things to happen to me; if I am a Christian, then God should make me happy and successful. God loves me and cares about my happiness, therefore he will provide me with my dream job, a long life, a good wife/husband, with successful results. If something is going wrong, then I am not being good, Christian or holy enough. However, the overwhelming Biblical evidence is that that belief is just utterly wrong.
Hosea being married to a prostitute and suffering from it for a metaphor God wanted to use, Ezekiel's wife dying for God to get a point across, the suffering of Jeremiah, eleven of the twelve disciples following Jesus and Paul being martyred in horrific ways, from an earthly perspective faithfulness to Christ looks like a pretty grim path to take - but that is exactly it. Christ suffered. Christ died. And the same fate came to many who followed him.
Our culture today, in the exaltation of positive emotions, has come to believe that God loving us necessarily means he wants us to be happy over all things. But, though I would imagine he would want us to be ultimately happy, he knows that we cannot truly find happiness apart from himself and the way he designed us to be: holy. God puts our eternal holiness over our temporary happiness.
By saying this I do not mean to say he is this terrible being that will make us suffer until we realise how we need him, in fact, he provides many sources of temporary joy and happiness in the world - a good conversation with a friend, a cool drink in a summer day, a beautiful sunset, a good book, family. However, he will not endlessly pour into our days all the blessings we hope to have less we forget the true Source of all joy.
Pain, suffering, frustration and failure often are ways in which we can grow closer to God and for him to make us holier. But not only that, even if while on earth we were to reach perfect holiness, we still would not be exempt of suffering any more than Jesus was. We also do not have to play the 'I'm a Christian and my life is perfect' card, as he showed. He experienced negative emotions too. He showed fear in the Getsemani (Luke 22, Matthew 26). I also think that there is some irritation/frustration when he curses the fig tree for it not having fruit, even though it was not season of figs (Mark 11.12-14). He shows anger against the people dishonouring the Father in the temple courts (Mark 11.15-17).
But ultimately, he remained faithful and obedient in spite of all this. He did not start listing things he should be doing differently in order to bargain with God and receive blessings; he never questioned God's goodness; he never asked 'why me?'. He did not necessarily want to go through carrying the sin of the world and being crucified (Luke 22.42), but we cannot wait to feel like we want to go through such things: obedience is only obedience when you do not necessarily want to do something. Otherwise, it is only doing what you would be doing anyway.
If we continue to believe that we need earthly blessings to know that God loves us, cares for us and is pleased with us, while we may be not be any less Christian, we may be stagnant in an immature state of relationship with God. We may never understand him, his character or will in more depth. We will be the two year old who is so distracted with the shiny gifts from the father (or distracted and worried why we did not receive the gifts from the father), that we miss out on the gift that the father is himself. Our hearts will be prone to wander and our faith weak.
We are not called to health, wealth, happiness and perfect families. We were not called to have the right feelings all the time and to just go with them. We are not called to results, successful stories, crowds of people who love us. Our lives have the purpose of glorifying God as the Son did, and the best way to do so is to do his will:
"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
- Micah 6.8
We are called for obedience in - even if it costs us all of those other shiny things we love so much. And in that, even the most extravagant, frustrating and gut-wrenching failure can be the greatest glory you have ever achieved.
