Significance and Success…

These colorful, little dinghies may seem insignificant, but they play an important role for sailors and fishermen as they ferry their owners from dock to boat and back again. Much of the time they are just idly floating and waiting until they are needed. Their “insignificance” is a reminder that comparing ourselves to others and their accomplishments or ascribing degrees of importance to professional, social, and political positions may give us a sense that we are unsuccessful and undervalued even though we have significant roles in our personal and community relationships.

Thankfully, God’s measurement of success doesn’t fit into some social/economic/racial hierarchy. We are all on the same footing with Him. Created with the ability to love, to show mercy and grace, and to display God’s glory, we possess human dignity, are of equal value, and share the same basic purposes of having a relationship with God, supporting each other in intimate relationships, and being guardians of each other and all creation. The Moral Law code, which is meant as a standard for all, emphasizes reverencing and loving God above all else and loving one another sacrificially. We, of course, fail miserably at all these tasks.

So, what then does success look like? Dietrich Bonhoeffer addressed the world’s defective criteria for success with this statement: “The figure of the Crucified (Christ) invalidates all thought which takes success as its standard”( Bonhoeffer p 326). In other words, from a secular viewpoint, Jesus’ life resulted in failure. Yet, he faithfully fulfilled His Father’s redemptive mission which has eternal significance for all humanity!

As one who lived life perfectly, Jesus gave us a solution to our success predicament. His life fulfilled all those God-given success requirements. Living and dying in obedience to his Father, he spoke his Father’s words, did the works his Father desired of him, and died on the cross for all peoples as the only one qualified to redeem and successfully make us God’s spiritual children by faith. He showed us that personal “success” is found in a believing heart which aligns with God’s heart and His loving directives. It is the development of a spiritually healthy life or becoming the image of God. It means living with an awareness of God in “whatever you do” and “working heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).

What we do is much less significant than how we view and perform what we do. Eugene Petersen’s paraphrase of Roman’s 12:1 helps us understand this: “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (The Message)

It seems that God is interested in who we are becoming not what we do. How one faces life and its challenges is more important than the type of work one performs. What could be more significant than faith leading to an active life of love, mercy, humility, peace, joy, and eternal life? How could one be more successful than that?