Redefining 'Success'

One of the more gripping slogans among Christians is aphorism that "my role-model for success is a thirty-three-year-old homeless man who was beaten to death." Christians are skeptical about the world's definition of 'success' - wealth, health, fame, pleasure, accomplishment, etc.

Doubting such a superficial understanding of success includes a challenge to propose a different concept to replace it. Hints about what such a new notion of success might be are found in the critique of the old idea of success. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done. Success heals the wounds of guilt. There is no sense in reproaching the successful man for his un-virtuous behavior, for this would be to remain in the past while the successful man strides forward from one deed to the next, conquering the future and securing the irrevocability of what has been done. The successful man presents us with accomplished facts which can never again be reversed. What he destroys cannot be restored. What he constructs will acquire at least a prescriptive right in the next generation. No indictment can make good the guilt which the successful man has left behind him. The indictment falls silent with the passage of time, but the success remains and determines the course of history. The judges of history play a sad role in comparison with its protagonists. History rides rough-shod over their heads. With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means.

Bonhoeffer here writes about the macro-level of history, but the lesson applies to the micro-level of our lives. The heavy-handed neighbor or colleague who usually gets his way moves forward in life, generally unaffected by the feelings he has hurt in the process. The conversation partner whose opinion is voiced strongly, and who fails to listen to other views, continues voicing his ideas, ignorant of, or oblivious to, his rudeness. How do people react to these powerful figures, who assert themselves at the expense of others and at the expense of any ethical standards?

So far we have been talking about facts and not about valuations. There are three possible attitudes which men and periods may adopt with regard to these facts.

The fact of worldly success confronts each onlooker with a question: was this right? should he have done this? A student who cheats on a homework assignment may have the success of a good grade from the teacher, but was it good, moral, or right for him to do that? The lure of success tempts many to hesitate in pointing out the evil done to achieve the success. Bonhoeffer writes:

When a successful figure becomes especially prominent and conspicuous, the majority give way to the idolization of success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and untruth, fair play and foul play. They have eyes only for the deed, for the successful result. The moral and intellectual critical faculty is blunted. It is dazzled by the brilliance of the successful man and by the longing in some way to share in his success. It is not even seen that success is healing the wounds of guilt, for the guilt itself is no longer recognized. Success is simply identified with good. This attitude is genuine and pardonable only in a state of intoxication. When sobriety returns it can be achieved only at the price of a deep inner untruthfulness and conscious self-deception. This brings with it an inward rottenness from which there is scarcely a possibility of recovery.

If one has the courage to see clearly that evil has been done in order to achieve success, then one is forced to face the uncomfortable reality that evil in this world sometimes - often? - triumphs. As the Psalmist cried: "why do the evildoers prosper?" - Bonhoeffer continues:

The proposition that success is identical with good is followed by another which aims to establish the conditions for the continuance of success. This is the proposition that only good is successful. The competence of the critical faculty to judge success is reaffirmed. Now right remains right and wrong remains wrong. Now one no longer closes one's eye at the crucial moment and opens it only when the deed is done. And now there is a conscious or unconscious recognition of a law of the world, a law which makes right, truth, and order more stable in the long run than violence, falsehood, and self-will. And yet this optimistic thesis is in the end misleading. Either the historical facts have to be falsified in order to prove that evil has not been successful, which very soon brings one back to the converse proposition that success is identical with goodness, or else one's optimism breaks down in the face of the facts and one ends by finding fault with all historical successes.

One might attempt to point out that justice eventually prevails, goodness eventually wins. This is true in a cosmic sense - eschatologically. Even when it is true in a shorter timeframe, it is often unsatisfying: Hitler was overcome, but only after causing untold human misery; one's cruel aunt eventually died, but only after causing deep emotional pain to family and neighbors. Such a claim of eventual justice is unsatisfying:

That is why the arraigners of history never cease to complain that all success comes of wickedness. If one is engaged in fruitless and pharisaical criticism of what is past, one can never find one's way to the present, to action, and to success, and precisely in this one sees yet another proof of the wickedness of the successful man. And, if only in a negative sense, even in this one quite involuntarily makes success the measure of all things. And if success is the measure of all things, it makes no essential difference whether it is so in a positive or in a negative sense.

Ultimately, a thought-process centered upon success - as 'success' is defined by the world - will collapse.

The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. Such thought is a denial of eternal justice. Neither the triumph of the successful nor the bitter hatred which the successful arouse in the hearts of the unsuccessful can ultimately overcome the world. Jesus is certainly no apologist for the successful men in history, but neither does He head the insurrection of shipwrecked existences against their successful rivals. He is not concerned with success or failure but with the willing acceptance of God's judgment. Only in this judgment is there reconciliation with God and among men.

The quest for "success" is brushed aside - the goal is reconciliation. The reestablishing of relation between man and God, and between man and man.

We can view this in two ways: either we abandon the pursuit of success for the pursuit of reconciliation, or we redefine 'success' as reconciliation. In either case, we are changing the paradigm. Bonhoeffer, as the reader will know, lived this question in a concrete reality. Risking and eventually losing his life on the basis of these thoughts, he was forced to wonder if his life had been a failure. Historian Eric Metaxas says of Bonhoeffer's notion:

God was interested not in success, but in obedience. If one obeyed God and was willing to suffer defeat and whatever came one's way, God would show a kind of success that the would couldn't imagine. But this was the narrow path, and few would take it.

We might adjust the wording of Metaxas a bit, and say that if in the course of obeying God one suffers defeat, one experiences a type of success that the world cannot imagine.

The Paradox of Prayer

If we define 'prayer' as conversation with God - and this is roughly accurate - we quickly encounter several mysteries. One of them arises from God's omniscience. He knows everything. How does one have a conversation with Someone Who knows everything?

If I start to thank Him, He already knows that for which I'm thanking Him - and He knows that I'm thankful for it. If I confess my sins to Him, He already knows them. If I ask Him for anything, He already knows my request. Why bother talking to Him at all, if He already has gotten the message before I think it?

There is possibly more than one correct answer to this question. The first might be obedience: we pray because He tells us to do so.

Another possible solution to the paradox of prayer is located on the borderline between psychology and spirituality. There is a cleansing effect to a conversation with an omniscient being, if we have meditated on the listener's omniscience. All possibility of pretense is removed.

I cannot pray, "Dear Lord, I want to be a better person," if in fact the personal sacrifices required to be a better person are ones I don't wish to make; I might pray, "I know that I should be a better person, but I really don't want to give up some particular pleasure." This admission can be the first step in God's work of improving me when I can't improve myself.

If I approach the searching light of God's omniscience with a request, I am forced to ponder, not the obvious fact that I want this or that, but rather why I want it; He can see my motives. I am also led to consider whether there might be something better than what I am requesting - an omniscient being will know better than I what all the options are, and what the unintended consequences of granting them can be.

When I confess my sins, He knows my darkest thoughts, and how I can be complacent with myself. His investigation moves effortlessly through the facade I've carefully built - a facade designed to convince myself and others that I'm a pretty decent human being.

When God says, "Be still and know that I am God," (Psalm 46) perhaps this is part of the meaning behind it: that a meditative stillness in the face of His omniscience is an important part of prayer. To stop talking to Him for a bit, and simply realize that I am thoroughly known. His act of knowing us can change us - Christians over the centuries have variously rephrased the truth that one benefit of prayer is to change the character of the one who prays.

It is, in any case, an amazing thing to have a conversation with someone who knows everything.

What Type of Sacrifice?

The concept of 'sacrifice' permeates spiritual thought. There are different types of sacrifices, made in different ways, by different people, for different purposes. The one sacrifice, which accomplished what all the others could not, was the death of Jesus. He, guilty of no sin, voluntarily allowed Himself to be executed as a criminal. Author Scott Hahn writes:

At our remove of two thousand years, it seems natural for us to look upon Jesus' crucifixion as a sacrifice. Christians are heirs to a long tradition of talking that way, praying that way, thinking that way. But first-century Jews who witnessed the event would not and could not have seen the crucifixion as a sacrifice. It bore none of the marks of a sacrifice in the ancient world. On Calvary there was no altar and no credentialed priest. There was indeed a death, but it took place apart from the Temple, which was the only valid place of sacrifice in Judaism, and even outside the walls of the holy city.

The New Testament makes the sacrificial nature of Christ's death explicit. Paul, for example, emphasizes this fact in his letters to the Corinthians. We can understand why this was necessary, given the ease with which it could have been overlooked or misunderstood. Richard Lenski writes:

According to the ancient Jewish rite a lamb was slain, and that slain lamb was made (for each family or for a similar group) the Passover. In a similar way Christ was slain to be our Passover Lamb. The connection of this lamb with Paul's admonition is implied yet is evident and clear: the Passover Lamb slain, and the Passover Feast thus begun, and yet the old leaven not cleaned out of the house - what a contradiction! If such a thing would frightful in the case of the Jews who slew and ate only lambs which were merely types, how much worse is it for us Christians who have our divine Lamb, the antitype, slain once for the deliverance of the world!

This paradox is yet another cause for the misunderstanding of Christ's sacrifice: although it atoned for all sin at once, the world remains in a fallen state. Paul's discussion of sacrifice naturally includes an allusion to the Last Supper, which was, after all, a Passover celebration. Hahn writes:

it was that first Eucharist that transformed Jesus' death from an execution to an offering. At the Last Supper he gave his body to be broken, his blood to be poured out, as if on an altar.

This leads to the words spoken by Moses about "the blood of the covenant" in Exodus. The direct parallel to the words of Jesus are startling - the room in which the Last Supper was eaten is linked, despite the intervening centuries, in an intimate way to the newly-freed slaves, escaping from Egypt, learning more about the God who saved them and loved them. Franz Delitzsch and Carl Keil write about this

sacrificial blood, in which animal life was offered instead of human life, making expiation as a pure life for sinful man, and by virtue of this expiation restoring the fellowship between God and man which had been destroyed by sin.

Like the blood of Jesus, the "blood of the covenant" at the time of Moses brought humans

into the fellowship of the divine grace manifested upon the altar, in order that, through the power of this sin-forgiving and sin-destroying grace, it might be sanctified to a new and holy life. In this way the sacrificial blood acquired the signification of a vital principle endued with the power of divine grace.

In the misunderstood or overlooked sacrifice, a new testament was embodied, as the old testament was embodied in the old "blood of the covenant" in the time of Moses.