"Passing" or "failing" the religious tests we confront cannot always be described in absolute terms. We can speak of Avraham "passing" the test of the famine even if his response fell, in the Ramban's view, far short of the ideal.
The Ramban, in one the more famous and intriguing passages in his commentary (Bereishit 12:10), surprisingly asserts that Avraham committed a sin when he left Canaan to escape the famine that ravaged the land. He writes that once God had instructed Avraham to reside in Canaan, he should have trusted in the Almighty's ability to support him even during harsh drought conditions, and he thus sinned by relocating in Egypt. The Ramban also claims that Avraham's scheme to pose as Sara's brother was likewise sinful. Rather than subjecting his wife to abuse at the hands of the Egyptians, the Ramban writes, he was to have trusted in God's ability to protect them, and identify himself as Sara's husband, despite the risk that he would then be killed.
Some later writers questioned the Ramban's theory in light of the Mishna's comment in Masekhet Avot (5:5) regarding the ten nisyonot ("tests") which Avraham confronted and successfully withstood. The commentators attempted to identify the ten tests and arrived at varying lists, but virtually all these lists include the onset of drought as one of Avraham's ten nisyonot. According to the Ramban, it would seem that Avraham could hardly be said to have "withstood" this test; to the contrary, his response to this challenge constituted, in the Ramban's words, an avon asher chata ("an iniquity that he committed").
Rav Yaakov Kopel Schwartz, in his Yekev Efrayim (Brooklyn, 2001), suggests reconciling the Mishna with the Ramban's claim by noting that even if Avraham transgressed by leaving Canaan, he prevailed in the sense of retaining general trust in, and loyalty to, God. True, he departed from the land in which he was commanded to reside, but he did not question God's promise of ultimate success and prosperity, or entertain doubts concerning his future. Avraham accepted the famine as a temporary digression, if you will, from the course God had promised, rather than viewing it as evidence of God's inability to carry this promise through to fruition. In this sense, then, he indeed withstood the test of the famine, even if he erred by escaping to Egypt.
It emerges from this discussion that "passing" or "failing" the religious tests we confront cannot always be described in absolute terms. We can speak of Avraham "passing" the test of the famine even if his response fell, in the Ramban's view, far short of the ideal. A person can take some pride in his successful handling of life's challenges even when he falls short of perfection, and even if he commits a mistake – or two – along the way. So long as the objective is to improve, one can feel gratified even with a score that is less than perfect.