By Dan Hazen / Herald Forum
When you get beaten, do you see yourself as a failure or a fraud?
A failure has clear motives, a consistent desire, a plan, and the means to do a thing but simply does not accomplish that thing. In contrast, a fraud has motives that are corrupted, misplaced desires, no plan or means to accomplish the thing, and then they lie about it.
Frauds never lose because someone bested them. They only lose because someone “cheated.” Frauds occasionally apologize, but they are never sorry. “I promise, Baby; I’ll never do it again.” Frauds take bribes and call it governance, use children as human shields and call it defending human rights, demand conformity and call it freedom. Frauds always move on. Like all scavengers, when the bones are picked clean, they follow the smell of death to the next relationship, the next city, the next box of cheap business cards and social media aliases.
But after millennia of dealing with frauds, we seem to be putting our collective foot down. History reveals scattered acts of defiance expressed mostly in regional rebellions of one kind or another: a revolution here, toppling a despotic leader there. But those were all cases of snapping the top off the weed. We’ve finally learned that tyrants and terrorists are, at their roots, frauds, so now we’re tugging at those roots with a new ferocity.
“Frauds beware! We see you and we won’t tolerate it anymore! We will accept only the certified, bona-fide, background-checked, evidence-based and best-practices-authorized, 25 years-experienced, fully bonded, insured and Blue-Check-Marked. Frauds, you’re on notice!”
Two problems: One, frauds (by definition) mimic whatever standard of authenticity we demand. Second, because of this, failures and frauds look nearly identical. We regularly confuse someone who is trying with someone who is lying, but there’s a huge difference. Fumbling the football is a failure. Intentionally handing it to your opponent and making it look like a fumble is fraud. We are creating an environment in which both are punished as the same act, and we’re losing the will to even try, for fear of failing and being marched to guillotine for it.
A result is a watered-down concept of “success.” It’s the least offensive, safest and certain thing; even if it’s unsustainable and mediocre. The least threatening. The lesser evil. It’s risk-management. It’s un-natural selection; the more we advance individuals whose only qualification is “Not a Fraud or Failure,” the more “Not a Fraud or Failure” becomes our only criteria for advancement and a spiral ensues. Do you wonder how Taylor Swift and Chick-fil-A have become such winners? It’s not necessarily because they’re great. It’s because they’re predictable. It’s because we lump failures in with frauds and punish the whole lot. Risk-takers and innovators are eliminated from the gene pool, and we wind up with … the acceptable; with record numbers of elected officials running un-opposed.
Keeping Donald Trump out of office means Joe Biden is the “best” option? Keeping Mark Driscoll or Benny Hinn out of the pulpit means we don’t go to church at all?
Frauds are best dealt with by establishing and sustaining boundaries of intent. Is a person’s intent to do the right thing, but they failed? Let them try again! Is there really a different, concealed intent? Then keep them out. They’re a fraud. How to tell the difference? Ancient wisdom says, “You will know them by their fruit.” What is their life producing? Failures can still produce beauty, love and truth but frauds always produce the grotesque, hatred and lies.
So, what if we pursued a truly progressive culture by embracing failure with kindness and seeing it as potential? What if we practiced nuanced thinking and sorted through the rubble for survivors of failure rather than writing off everyone and abandoning good people? There’s a twinkle of hope in that thought for me.
“They got a name for the winners in the world,
I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama The Crimson Tide,
Call me Deacon Blues.”
— Donald Fagan
Dan Hazen is the community pastor at Allen Creek Community Church in Marysville.
Herald Forum
The Herald Forum invites community members to submit essays on topics of importance and interest to them. Essays typically are between 400 and 600 words in length, although exceptions for longer pieces can be made. To submit essays or for more information about the Herald Forum, write Herald Opinion editor Jon Bauer at jbauer@heraldnet.com or call him at 425-339-3466.
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