There’s a time and place in divine justice for failure.
Who calls Jesus’ crucifixion a success? Sometimes it’s not a matter of winning, but of losing well. In some contexts, no single answer you can see is best. We are blinded by a Western focus on objectivity, as if such a thing actually exists in a world of shadows. We start from the assumption this entire plane of existence is one big lie, so how can we assume there is a right and wrong answer if nothing obvious sticks out? In the dark night of soul, it’s faithfulness to God, a desire to please Him, that matters in the first place.
The greatest treasure is not what you gain or can claim to hold, but what holds you. God never portrayed Himself as a king as we recognize the term. He was always an eastern potentate, a nomad sheikh who lived in a tent. The most valuable thing in His domain is His reputation, though hardly in the terms we tend to view it. Rather, it is all a matter His glory. We are here to manifest His glory, not in how we win or lose, but in how we live with both wins and losses, and sometimes do nothing at all.
We are to project such a high valuation of Him in Heaven that we can afford to deemphasize what we face here. That includes our own suffering and sorrows.
Granted, those things are a heavy distraction and such fine words are often beyond us. Again, it’s not that we show such a marvelous expertise in handling sorrow, but that in the end people can tell there is something more important to us. You can cry when you lose something; there’s no sin in that. But at some point you move on because your commitment to this life is not bound up in anything here, but outside this universe.
Insofar as we have a goal, it is to genuinely stop caring about this life. In the paradox of truth, that means we care about other people and their suffering because we can afford to set aside our own. The empty tomb means we aren’t stuck here when it’s all over.
