I love my trophies.
When I played competitive sport as a child trophies were highly prized and you had to work extremely hard to get them. I managed to score three or four trophies throughout all my childhood and early teens. But today I look at my children's shelves and they are overcrowded with trophies. Soon I'll have to build a new shelf if we are to accommodate further wins.
At birthday parties every kid will come home with the same amount of disposal paraphernalia. When I was a kid only one person won a prize in pass the parcel. It was the person who unwrapped the last wrapping. The game had tension, suspense and a thrill for whoever happened to be holding the parcel on the last round. Now kids switch off once they have opened their layer and got their prize. Why keep playing when there's no more interest and you have already reaped your reward so easily?
Look, I know teachers, coaches and parents are all trying to encourage kids; it's well meant and very young children often have trouble understanding how they could possibly not win a prize. However, it seems to me that in our great desire to build children's self-esteem and avoid any discouragement in their lives, we may in the long run be doing the exact opposite. We may be building children up to have false expectations of life. Don’t we want our children to be resilient and able to cope with disappointment?
What will happen to their self-esteem when they discover life is not fair? Or that sometimes despite your best efforts you do not succeed; you do not win gold? Sure enough, hard work pays off…usually. The farmer who tends to his land reaps a good harvest. However, Australia’s Olympic swimmers in London are a current case in point. The men's relay team was devastated when they did not manage to win a medal in an event where they were expected to win gold. These are people who have been training hard for the past four years and yet they fell short of their expectations and hopes. Everyone does not walk home with a medal. They have to reassess, debrief, retrain and focus once again on the event in four years time. Sometimes people are just better than you on the day. Sometimes, it’s beyond you and life doesn’t reward your effort (Ecclesiastes 6:1-2). We could be teaching our kids valuable life lessons amidst all this, but instead we only dwell on success stories, those who win gold. Then we reward all our kids with medals just to show they can be successful too. It might be helpful to hear about people’s progress and what challenges they’ve faced…perhaps 4th or 15th is a huge win for them??
Resilience and perseverance. I mean look at the 100 metre hurdles race this morning where Australian Sally Pearson, won gold in London. Afterward, in interviews we hear the commitment, dedication and sacrifice that such athletes have to make to achieve their dream. It doesn't come easily and it requires enormous perseverance. Steve Jobs once said that the difference between entrepreneurs and the really successful entrepreneurs is perseverance. If our kids get their awards with relative ease will they ever develop the perseverance needed to push on? Our children may have ideas, ambition, and hopes but without perseverance nothing will happen. How will this false expectation of easy success at every corner affect their resilience when they hit an obstacle and don't succeed first time round?
The New Testament has a lot to say about resilience and perseverance and winning the ultimate goal or prize, eternal life. Controversially, eternal life is given to those who do not deserve it. You cannot earn God’s forgiveness. All you can do is accept it with gratitude (Romans 5:8). We can all win gold after all! Eternal life is free thanks to Jesus death on the cross. However, this prize of prizes is received by faith, by dependence on God’s word that He will give it to you because he said so, despite your shortcomings. This reliance on God's Word will be tested. Stuff will happen in life that will cast into doubt God's goodness and the reliability of his promise. Stuff will come our way that will seem more worthwhile and more attractive than God's agenda. Perseverance. Perseverance must finish what we started (James 1:2-3). Perseverance will take us to the end where we will receive the crown of life not because of anything we've done or how good we are but because we never let go of God's promise to give us the gold we never deserved in the first place.
