Failure Is A Feature, Not A Bug

Why did Jesus choose Judas to be one of His apostles if He knew he would betray Him? Why did God allow Joseph Smith to translate 116 pages if He knew they would be lost? Why not allow him to only translate five or ten pages? First of all, I know that God is omniscient, but I’m not certain that He knows with one hundred percent certainty how we will choose to act until the moment actually arrives. I’m certain that He has all kinds of backup plans and contingencies and has thought everything through ten thousand steps ahead if we choose this or that path, but until we actually commit to a decision, I think even God is waiting to see what we will actually choose. God knew that Joseph Smith was probably going to give into Martin Harris’s demands and so two thousand years earlier he had prepared a backup plan so that His works would not be frustrated. But until Joseph actually chose to give Martin those pages, God couldn’t know for certain what Joseph would do. And we can’t know what other backup plans God had in place if Joseph made other mistakes. When he lost those pages, God told Joseph that if he did not repent, his gift would be taken away from him and given to another. One of the prophecies of Joseph was that he would be named after Joseph of Egypt and also named after his father. One of the early saints of the church who happened to live in a similar area to the Smiths was Joseph Knight Jr. It’s entirely possible that the Lord had prepared the Knight family to take over should Joseph have proved unfaithful again. The important takeaway is that God is playing the long game. He can afford to lose 116 pages if it means that His servant will learn a vitally important lesson from his failure and go on to become a servant whose later accomplishments will far outshadow this early mistake. It is the same with us. God may call us to a great and important work. We may fail spectacularly. But God’s work will not be frustrated. He has already prepared things to such a degree that our failures will not permanently disrupt the rolling forth of His gospel. And God would rather put His faith and His trust in us and have us fail and come out humbler and wiser and more reliant on Him, than just go in and do it Himself or arrange things so that He gives that task to someone He knows will do a better job of it. God calls the weak things of the Earth to do His will because that is all He has ever had to work with, and because He has faith that these weak things will become stronger.