Sean McDowell | September 25, 2015

What is the Best Way to Handle Failure? Brief Interview with Josh McDowell.

Sean McDowell.org

SEAN: Dad, in what ways have you failed in your life?

JOSH: What do you mean by failure?

SEAN: In what ways have you fallen short of your goals? Or maybe just failed to accomplish something you’d hoped to accomplish?

JOSH: I don’t often look at that as failure. My philosophy of life is: If you want to accomplish much, you will make many mistakes. If you’re not willing to make a mistake, you usually will not be successful. I believe behind every successful story—whether business, books, or anything—there’s shortcoming that came about through it. Personally, I tried to write three or four different books, but they bombed. And others said, “Doesn't that discourage you?” No, because if I hadn’t tried, it would have haunted me my whole life. Also, I had to ask myself, why didn’t it work? For one, it didn’t work because I did not research out the audience I was writing it to. And so ever since then I have learned from that failure, and it’s brought many, many, many successes.


SEAN: What do you think is a biblical view of failure? How should Christians look at the times that they make mistakes or they fail, at least in terms of how the world defines failure?

JOSH: Romans 8:28 tells us that God will cause all things to work together for the good. In every failure in my life—whether writing, relationally, or whatever—I can’t think of any I didn’t learn from it and God produced fruit in my life because of it. Just look at my home life, being sexually abused and homosexually raped from ages 6-13. I would never want that for anyone else. But God has taken that, and enabled me to help many other people. And so God has taken all the weaknesses in my life, failures, everything and worked it together for the good.

But, a lot of it though, Sean, comes back to attitude. I expect myself to fail. When I make mistakes and I fail, others get so much more upset than I do. I usually don’t get that upset, because I know I won’t repeat the same failure again. And this is why I tell people who work for me that I don’t want perfectionists. Rather, I want people who are willing to take a chance and make mistakes. But only once. Look at Colonel Sanders with Kentucky Fried Chicken. He failed in about 20 businesses. And then he hit it big when he was about 60 years old with KFC. Yet in every failure he learned something, and he didn’t repeat that failure again. And eventually he was tremendously successful. Learn from your failures and from your mistakes.


SEAN: What advice would you have for people that are afraid to fail and fear making mistakes?

JOSH: Consider getting my book on self-image and see yourself as God sees you. Study it very carefully. If you’re afraid to make mistakes, you don’t see yourself in a realistic, biblical, and healthy way. Let me give an illustration, I was meeting with president George W. Bush, and somehow parenting came up and he said “Josh, I’ve never known a moment in my life that my father didn’t love me unconditionally.” And I’ve heard that from a lot of people, but then the president added “And do you know what that did for me?” I had no idea, so I said “What?” Sean this is profound. He said, “It set me free to fail.” Now you think of that. Until you are loved unconditionally, by someone, no matter what you do, how bad it is, whatever, they’ll still love you, then you’re not free to fail.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, a best-selling author of over 15 books, an internationally recognized speaker, and a part-time high school teacher. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog at seanmcdowell.org.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, a best-selling author, popular speaker, and part-time high school teacher. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell, TikTok, Instagram, and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.