The Test You Will Fail
And why you must still prepare.
I’m Stephen, and welcome to my newsletter. I write about spirituality, mental health, Bipolar Disorder, men’s health, and LGBT issues. I write from my own challenges and experiences, and I hope to offer company to others who are suffering and struggling.
The Test will come when you least expect it.
You will be bored, tired, or stressed. You will be blissfully happy, or catastrophically depressed. You will have other things to worry about. You will have bills to pay or jobs to get to. You will need to walk your dog or get to your friend's birthday party. Your children will be struggling in school, or your parents will be dying. You will have so many sundry duties to tend to. The Test is no respecter of your life circumstances.
In the midst of this inconvenient life, Frodo will offer you the One Ring. The Test will feel tailor-made to take advantage of your unique fears and weaknesses. It won’t hit you where you are strongest, but where you are weakest. It will target your deepest fears, oversights, and the places within yourself that scare you most.
You will be given an opportunity to destroy another person’s life in the pursuit of pleasure, power, or malice. You will be given a window to tell a lie that will alter the course of a human life. You will be given a chance to take advantage of someone else sexually or stand by while someone else does. You will be confronted with an injustice that needs immediate repair, and you will want to turn a blind eye. Other times, the Test comes in the form of pleasure and escape: that affair, that syringe, that bottle, that pill.
No one is spared; no one is left untouched by this withering eye of God that is woven into the warp and woof of human life. We are born, we age, we die, and, again and again throughout that pageantry, we are tested.
You hope that you are moral enough just as you are to withstand this Test, but that way lies folly. Take this to heart as you would the words of your dying mother: you will not pass the Test just as you are. If you could, it would not be a test. Have confidence in your moral fiber just as you are, and you will fail.
Like any trial, you must prepare for it. You can’t run a marathon if you don’t train, and you can’t ace an exam if you don’t study.
The best study comes in three parts:
Ruthlessly examine what you believe to be right, wrong, and why. Don’t assume you are God, or that you have freshly eaten the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and see what is right and wrong. Even the greatest sages disagree. Examine what you believe to be true, choose a set of principles that you have good reason to believe are true, and hone your moral principles to a sharpened edge.
Remember that you will never have the final word on what is moral. Morality is a collective act — the work of many humans re-routing and re-examining. Adhere to your ethical principles while also knowing that your mind and intuition are faulty mechanisms and that we all see through a glass darkly. Commit to ethics as a perpetually self-correcting process.
Keep your principles before your eyes daily and practice them rigorously in small things. Knowing what is right is different from doing what is right. Knowing how to lift a weight is different from lifting it. Such knowledge is meaningless if we do not put it into daily action.
The four ancient virtues of the Roman philosophers are a decent place to start as a broad moral guide. At every moment, ask yourself: What is Just? What is Courageous? What is Temperate? What is Wise? And, for good measure, ask yourself what: is Compassionate?
These questions must be asked periodically throughout your day, even when they don’t seem warranted: when you are driving, working your job, or taking a shower. You will be surprised to discover that, even in these inconsequential moments, there will be some ethical call.
Rely on passages from your childhood religious traditions, if that is helpful for you. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Writes Saint Paul in Philippians 4:8.
Or draw from the lives of noble men and women: Gandhi, MLK Jr. , Sojourner Truth, or Hildegard Von Bingen. Find your own sage and walk the path they walked.
As for daily practice, Seneca’s evening meditation offers a simple daily practice of moral examination. Every night before you sleep, review your day with ruthless sincerity. As Seneca writes in a letter to Lucilius:
“I make use of this opportunity, daily pleading my case at my own court. When the light has been taken away and my wife has fallen silent, aware as she is of my habit, I examine my entire day, going through what I have done and said. I conceal nothing from myself, I pass nothing by. I have nothing to fear from my errors when I can say: ‘See that you do not do this anymore. For the moment, I excuse you.’”
Or, as Pythagoras said, as quoted by Epictetus in his Discourses:
Admit not sleep into your tender eyelids Till you have reckoned up each deed of the day— How have I erred, what done or left undone? So start, and so review your acts, and then For vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad.
This practice will begin to shape you as a river shapes a mountain. It will fortify your moral strength so that you don’t tell small lies lest you tell a big lie, or live a life that necessitates small lies lest you begin to lead a life that warrants big lies. You will be less likely to stand by for small injustices lest you let large injustices slide. You won’t mindlessly indulge in small vices (and there is nothing wrong with occasional vices) lest you apply the same mindlessness to a life-destroying vice.
It is only with this daily ethical practice that you will have a chance—only a chance—of passing the Test when, on that ordinary day, it comes for you.
Know that, despite all your work and daily practice, you will inevitably encounter a test that you will not pass. Hindsight will make it clear that, despite the best of intentions, you failed grievously. You will have been pushed to your limit, facing the wall of your frailty, or simply operating under a delusion that you were convinced was true.
Then comes the greatest Test of all: Grace.
Grace is not to make excuses, and there are always excuses. You were tired; you were ignorant; it wasn’t your business; you were just following orders. It might not be your fault that you failed the Test, but it is your responsibility. These abdications don’t just shelter you from the crushing weight of responsibility; they also protect you from the far more painful refining fire of self-forgiveness, learning from your mistakes, and choosing to do better.
That secondary trial—the test of self-forgiveness and commitment to doing better—is, perhaps, the hardest Test of all.
But that’s just me. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section, and if your comment is excellent, I might feature it in an upcoming post.
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Once again, I feel like you've presented an argument with a choice of either keep going or do better...and make me want to do better.
This one left scorch marks on my soul in the best possible way.
You’re right, Stephen. The Test doesn’t knock first. It shows up mid-scroll, mid-shower, mid-boredom, and whispers, “Just this once…” And if we haven’t trained our moral muscles daily—if we haven’t practiced catching ourselves in the tiny betrayals—we won’t just fail the Test, we’ll explain it away like cowards in a confessional built by denial.
But the part that hit me deepest? Grace. The kind that doesn’t come cheap or wear perfume. The kind that demands you kneel before your own wreckage, hold eye contact with your shame, and still choose to rise—not in denial, but in devotion to becoming better.
This isn’t self-help. It’s sacred training. Spiritual bootcamp. A reminder that ethics are forged in the mundane, not just the dramatic.
Thank you for writing something that demands I don’t just read it, but live it.