Success and Failure

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)

For many, worldly success is life’s ultimate goal. If one is to be anything during this brief time on Earth, he/she is to be successful, whether academically, financially, professionally, or socially. We should all strive, we are told, to imitate the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan, and Bill Gates; and, like them, we must all possess a laser-like focus on achieving our goals and a willingness to brush aside every obstacle in our way on the road to personal glory. To work 70+ hours a week, to forgo friendships (or even a family), and to have your job ever present in your mind during every waking hour is all par for the course when chasing some desired goal. No sacrifice is to be considered too great. No task is ever to be shunned. Success must be had at all costs: it is the purpose of our existence.

With this glorification of earthly success has come an opposite attitude towards failure: contempt. We see this play out with derogatory labels like “loser”. To be called a loser is to be classified as an incompetent waste of space—a sorry excuse for a human being who is to be shunned by society for offering nothing in contribution to the world. Those who are commonly viewed as losers include the homeless, the economically deprived, low-wage earners, the uneducated, the unemployed, and drug and alcohol addicts These are society's dregs— great wastes of space worthy of our scorn.

Such is the way we categorise people. There are winners and losers; achievers and failures; go-getters and deadbeats. Accumulating great amounts of wealth, political power, and social prestige is what it means to be a winner; and to be a winner is our life's mission, so says the world.

But… the world is wrong.

Life’s true meaning can be found, not in an article in Forbes magazine or the words of a speaker at a TED talk but in the two fundamental commandments laid out by our Lord in the Gospels: (1) to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and (2) to love our neighbours as ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). This is our life’s mission, and this is the standard by which we measure how well we spend our time on this planet. Everything we do must be done in light of these two aims.

If we have any doubts about this, all we have to do is pay close attention to the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21). The man in the story was quite the successful landowner. His harvest was so plentiful that he was forced to build bigger barns to store the surplus grain. He was such a savvy business owner that he made sure he had enough produce to last a lifetime—so much, in fact, that he felt secure enough to retire early and spend the rest of his days eating, drinking, and being merry. Yet, this man was not as clever as he thought himself to be: in the eyes of God, he was a fool. God does not value the worldly success of an individual but their holiness. The rich man was many things, but holy he was not.

Likewise, in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the truly successful man was not the wealthy man, but the beggar. We are not told about how the Rich Man acquired his wealth, but we can imagine that he was a shrewd financer or a local ruler in the vein of Solomon. Yet, according to Christ, it was the beggar, Lazarus, who slept on this man's doorstep, that lived a successful life: it was he who reached the Kingdom of Heaven.

A homeless man by all appearances might be a total catastrophe of a human being—he might not have achieved anything of any great note financially or professionally, and he might have squandered the entirety of whatever he did have—but if he loves his God and his fellow human beings more than a financial director at a multinational bank or the chief executive officer of one of the world’s tech giants, then it is he who is truly living a more successful life. God looks with greater favour on the dinner lady who serves meals in her local primary school for very little money but does everything for the love of God and family than the superstar singer-songwriter who sells out stadiums wherever she plays and has millions of people listening to her songs on Spotify. The cleaner and the carer are more of a success than the civil servant if they do the will of God; the binman more than the banker, the postal worker more than the politician; the lolly-pop lady more than the lawyer.

(Of course, the reverse can be true also: the civil servant can lead a more truly successful life than the cab driver, just as the stockbroker can be more successful than the shop assistant. But the civil servant is only successful because he is first and foremost a servant of the Lord, and a servant of the government second. The stockbroker can only be said to be leading the good life if he is striving after virtue and holiness more than he is striving after a financial client. The point is not that you shouldn’t aim to be successful in your career, but that your worldly success cannot come at the expense of your spiritual success. If you are called to be a software engineer, then be the best software engineer that you can be; if you are called to be a neurosurgeon, be an excellent one. But always remember where your success truly lies. It doesn’t lie in the financial rewards that you may reap, or the praise you receive from peers, or in exceeding your company's sales targets, or in awards and honours, but in who you are in relation to God).

Therefore, we needn't worry if we feel as though life is passing us by and we have done nothing of any great note. We shouldn't despair at our perceived lack of accomplishment or success. Heaven is our goal; and if we go about each day loving God and our neighbour, continuously growing in holiness and virtue to a point where, once we leave this material universe and ascend to the throne of God and are permitted to stay in his kingdom for an eternity, then we can say with full confidence that we have truly lived a successful life.