Again and Again

Another snippet from the desert fathers and mothers devotional commentary to encourage you—especially if you, like me, fret about your failures.

Blessings,

A

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Again and Again
A brother asked Abba Sisoes, “What shall I do, abba, for I have fallen?” The old man said, “Get up again.” The brother said, “I have got up again, but I have fallen again.” The old man said, “Get up again and again.”

So then the brother said, “How many times?” The old man said, “Until you are taken up either in virtue or in sin. For a man presents himself to judgment in the state in which he was found.”

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Too many are the theologies of victory. What we need is a theology of failure.

We need this because the failures are everywhere. And they are not only, not even primarily, “out there” somewhere. The failures are ours. And how we reckon with them says much about what we believe about God, the gospel, ourselves.

“He knows what we are made of; he remembers that dust is all we are” (Ps. 103:14).

Dust. That is what we are. Beloved dust. Breathed into by the very breath of God, animated by nothing less than the Spirit of life–no doubt. But first and forever: dust.

And worse than dust, says the Scripture. We are animate dust fallen from grace, corrupted in our every ligament and sinew. “Sin” is the word for what has corrupted our frame; “sinner” is what we are.

It causes us angst even to read that word; much less to adopt it as a self-description. We wriggle and writhe, trying to free ourselves from it.

In the world we do this by denying the fact of sin altogether. No such thing as wrong or right, sin or righteousness–only personal preference. Do what feels good to you–so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. And by all means–do not live with shame or remorse, guilt or regret. Those won’t serve you at all in this buyer’s market of consumeristic self-actualization.

In the church we do this by buying into false and destructive doctrines–doctrines that teach that perfection, sinlessness, “total sanctification” is available to us in this life. That we can, if we do it just right, walk completely free from sin this side of eternity.

Sounds nice. Till you try it. Then you realize how hard it is. Suddenly you are faced with options.

Option 1 - Double down on the deceptive doctrine. Keep trying. Keep chasing the carrot of perfection. Odds are good you’ll bust. If you’re fortunate, you’ll bust publicly, obviously, in a way that forces you to abandon the charade altogether, in favor of a more biblical, humane path to holiness.

If you are less fortunate, you’ll bust privately but maintain the charade. Everyone will think you are doing well. But you will be in hell in your soul. A duplicitous life is a heavy burden.

Option 2 - Abandon the effort altogether. Holiness is impossible. Righteousness is a fiction. The world will burn, and we will burn with it. The option is as old as humanity. “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die…” (1 Cor. 15:32) “Everything is meaningless…” (Eccl. 1:2)

But meaninglessness too is a heavy burden. The soul knows better. “He has set eternity in our hearts…” (Eccl. 3:11) The cognitive dissonance this option creates is too much to bear.

Is there another option? Indeed:

Option 3 - Embrace your finitude. Accept that you will fail. And choose to get up, by the grace of God, “again and again.”

The saints understand that this is what holiness is–not moral perfection, not flawlessness or sinlessness, but a determination to keep casting oneself at the Mercy, knowing that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), and that “a righteous man falls seven times but gets back up again” (Prov. 24:16).

Did you hear that? The righteous man is a failure. A perfect failure. A failure to the utmost–seven times! But always and ever–he gets up one more time than he falls.

That is, he trusts the Mercy. And that is his righteousness.

It is easy to believe that God, at some point, will sicken and finally tire of our failures. But here too we must allow ourselves to be confronted by the biblical God. The prophet Micah said that God is one who “delights to show mercy” (Micah 7:18).

Forgiving us is his joy. It is among the things he is best at, the things he takes the most pleasure in, his positive and persistent delight.

Knowing this allows us to stay in the game with the right expectations. It also will allow us to be merciful to others in their failures, since we are never less or more than those to whom God has shown mercy. It will keep us grounded, humble, human, humane.

Someone once asked a monk, “What do you do there in the monastery all day long?” He replied:

“We fall and get up, fall and get up, fall and get up…”

As Sisoes says: “Again and again.”