Gafargaon Astonished by a piece about the writer Shusaku Endo, about the role of failure and rejection and suffering in Christianity.
Huimanguillo This he sees as the sense of failure in life and the subsequent shame and guilt that leave a lasting impact upon a person’s life. Such theological notions as love, grace, trust, and truth are intelligible only in the experience of their opposites. Endo sees them incarnate in the person of Jesus through his own experience of failure, rejection, and, most of all, ineffectualness. Only rarely has modern Christianity presented the story of Jesus as the one to whom those who had failed, were rejected, lonely, and alienated could turn and find understanding and compassion. Endo argues that it is our universal human experience of failure in life that provides us with an understanding of Christian faith in its depth.
Read the whole first two sections of the link. Their succinctness is quite extraordinary.
The experience of failure is what opens the door. Something must strike you from your horse, or all you do is get to Damascus. We see it again and again (most recently we spoke about it in relation to Andrew Sullivan). Probably the whole meaning of the “male spirituality” idea is that men in particular need to be told that success is not the point – they need to be taught some way to break through the lie of endless progress and ascent.
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