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Good morning. The last chapter of the race for the White House has been hard to watch. Twenty-three years ago, on election night, John Major said, ‘When the curtain falls, it’s time to get off the stage.’ It seems President Trump doesn’t want to read the memo.

A psychologist might say he’s experiencing denial. Denial is often described as the first stage of grief. Many of us can appreciate the reluctance to confront an unpalatable truth – the loss of a person or a dream, the collapse of an enterprise or vision. In this case the unpalatable truth is failure.

Every failure is a kind of death. Often what dies is a dream of a new world with me at the centre of it, or my fantasy of perpetual fulfilment and gratification.
Religious faith is built on the insights of failure. For Christians, the Old Testament begins when Israel finds itself in exile in Babylon and writes down its story. The New Testament focuses on Christ’s agonising death, abandoned by his followers. Christianity is like a twelve-step programme: you only get to start if you’re prepared to say the terrifying words, ‘I have failed.’

Life begins the moment you fail, and the moment you admit you’ve failed. There’s no use pretending you can get out of life alive. There’s no resurrection without death, and the acceptance of death.

One priest in Northern Ireland, an unsung hero of the peace process, taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten. His name was Bill Arlow. Reflecting on decades of disappointment, destruction, and grief, he said, ‘It’s better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.’

When Christians look at the cross, they see an image of what it means to fail in a cause that will finally succeed. That cause is the overcoming of enmity and alienation such that humanity can be with God forever. A person who trusts in that eventual success can withstand any amount of failure.

Bill Arlow spoke in 1988, when the end of the Troubles was not yet in sight. But his words about true success are not a bad summary of what it means to live by faith. He knew he was on the right side of history. He just didn’t know how long it would take.

And that’s changed the way I think about success. It turns out the most successful person in the world isn’t the one who holds the top job in Washington DC. It’s the one who isn’t paralysed by the fear of their own failure.

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