Failure Fatigue

True Freedom Trust is right to prioritise fellowship and community as ways for members to ensure that their faith walk keeps to the straight and narrow. There is no surprise here, since finding and keeping community are fundamentally scriptural (1 Cor. 1: 10; Heb. 10: 25; 1 John 1: 7, and many others). As we have seen in some of the other articles in this edition of Ascend, a key function of fellowship and community is accountability. As Christians, we need each other’s help identifying the course corrections urged by the Holy Spirit. This is the gist of Psalm 128: 5: that the Lord blesses us “from Zion.” Zion is, of course, Jerusalem, the “city of peace” where God protects His people. If we shun residence in this spiritual city, how much protection can God provide?

What is accountability?

The word ‘accountability’ is a modern confection, but is based on a principle found throughout scripture, perhaps most significantly in Rom. 14: 12: “So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.” We are to think of accountability as the final opening-up of the ledgers of our lives. Along the way, however, we draw strength from the encouraging redirections of our fellow ‘citizens’ (1 Thess. 5:11), allowing the iron of our lives to sharpen theirs (Prov. 27:17) and their iron to sharpen ours. This part can be messy. Accountability requires openness, which requires vulnerability. This then gives others access, not only to the facts of our struggles, but also to the sordid day-to-details. The messiness of vulnerability is what makes so many cringe at the mention of accountability. I am one of those who cringe at the mention of it. Allow me to explain.

A few years ago, I joined a group based here in the U.S. that met weekly over Zoom. It was well attended and had been around for decades. Group cohesion was strong and the level of care and support among its staff and members was palpable and welcoming. The format went roughly as follows: each week, a different member spoke for 20–30 minutes about his or her struggles with sexual brokenness, whether in the form of pornography addition, pursuit of illicit affairs, marital infidelity or same-sex attraction. Afterward, the other members of the group commended him or her on their ‘transparency’ and ‘vulnerability’ in having shared their struggles. After a few weeks of this, I politely raised the question, “What are we supposed to do with this information?” I wondered whether we were to draw any specific life guidance from these stories or merely appreciate their testimonial aesthetics. I never got a real answer and concluded that the point of the group was to become very good at self-disclosure and at expanding one’s vocabulary in talking about one’s brokenness. That wasn’t a good fit for me.

A second experience involved an in-person group that meets in the city where I live. I attended long enough to get a feel for the group and its dynamics. Almost all the members were older Christian men with same-sex attraction who were married to women. All the members of the group were struggling to harmonise their same-sex attraction with their marriages, and none of them were doing it well. After one of the meetings, the coordinator told me privately and apologetically that over the years the group ‘had lost hope.’ Incidentally, this group followed the same testimony format, with each person (who wanted to) sharing his struggles from the previous week, whether with masturbation, pornography or the challenges of drumming up sexual interest in one’s wife. This was done with a kind of practised specificity and ended with the other men in the group offering sage nods of solidarity and muttering words of support. It was a format I hated.

Failure fatigue

But why did I hate it so? What was missing? Why was my own heart not receptive to this level of vulnerability and self-disclosure? It took some time, but eventually I realised that my problem was topic fatigue. Topic fatigue is a real thing that can slowly eat its way into well-intentioned groups, whose coherence is centred on a common interest. Just as with any kind of social club, however, the topic itself can get stale, especially when the emphasis is on talking about it in the same way, over and over. If too much emphasis is placed on successful performance, topic fatigue can morph into something much worse: failure fatigue. In my case, I was experiencing both. I was tired of hearing about people’s specific sexual struggles, and I was tired of revisiting my own failures. I felt far more discouraged than encouraged.

Apparently, I’m not alone in my topic fatigue when it comes to talking about sexual failure and sexual wholeness. In his 2018 book “Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals our way to Healing”, Christian psychotherapist Jay Stringer offers strong criticism for support group formats built rigidly around sexual self-disclosure:
“Ask most millennials about their experiences with accountability in the church and you will typically get a smirk or a look of worry. An accountability partner was essentially there to have a front-row seat to the ‘bad’ sexual things you did in your life. Accountability became a form of Christian voyeurism.” p211

Transformation in community

According to Stringer, the solution to this endemic problem is to “invite the community to turn from the policing of bad behaviour to setting the stage for transformation.”
His point is well taken. Sexual brokenness tends to involve quite a lot of back-sliding (picture Sisyphus of Greek mythology pushing his rock uphill, only to have it slide back to where it was before.) In my own case, it has involved a mixed bag of progress and relapse, much like those redeemed by the Lord in Psalm 107. Like them, I have done much “wandering in the desert wastelands” and “being hungry and thirsty”, followed by “crying out to the Lord in my trouble”, with the Lord “delivering me from my distress” and “leading me by a straight way”, only for me to “sit in darkness” (again) and “cry out” (again) and be “brought out of the darkness” (again). The point of Psalm 107 is not that God’s redeemed people eventually snap out of their waywardness, but rather that God accomplishes marvellous and unmerited deliverances again and again when called upon. Ultimately, He calls on us to “ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.” (v. 43)

This is not to say-at all-that we should devote less energy to overcoming sexual brokenness in whatever form it takes in our lives. But it does mean that, if we’re stuck in a ‘Psalm 107 rut’, we might need to try a form of accountability we haven’t tried before. What might this look like? Stringer suggests that “…the most damaging aspect of someone’s life is not his or her failure but being disconnected from others.” p 213. Accountability, if done badly, pushes us out of the very community we so desperately need. Stringer explains: “Communities are at their best when they create space for individuals to explore the many reasons that connection has been so difficult. In this way, connection is an invitation, not a dogmatic demand in order to have a proper standing before God…God’s design for sexual transformation is about a connection to love, not the fear of wrath.” p 214

When Stringer states that sexual transformation is a ‘connection to love’, he is referring to three different forms of community:
•    a place to experience structure and offer moral support
•    a place to offer empathy for others
•    a place to discover purpose

All three forms nourish us in spite of our failings and inspire us to live better lives, simply because we see worth in ourselves and in our allies  – those who accompany us on our Christian walk. Perhaps most importantly, participation in these forms of community “frees accountability from the confines of a success/failure paradigm into a shared hope for what your life is intended to become.” p 216

I shied away from traditional accountability because I disliked the voyeuristic or ‘nosy’ feel of it – at least in the few settings in which I gave it an honest try. I mustn’t discredit the traditional format outright, since I believe it can be practised well and work well, but I’m relieved to learn that there are reasonable alternatives to the ‘older’ method. As I’ve researched a little, I’ve found that these alternatives have to do mostly with fostering community as a goal in itself, not as a bridge to purity  – however that may be defined. The logic is basic: companions in the faith strengthen us by being there for us, by speaking everyday truth into our lives and by knowing who we are. 
We need community, and that means we need allies. We must choose our allies carefully. I’m grateful that True Freedom Trust is full of such allies and that TFT makes a way for me to be an ally to others.
 

This article was originally published in the Summer 2025 edition of the TFT magazine, Ascend. Click the button below to download your copy.

To give space to discuss certain articles in greater depth, the TFT staff team will be recording occasional podcasts under the banner “Ascend Higher”, covering the issues raised in a more conversational style. To hear it for yourself, you can use the audio player below.