What is Real Success?

What is Real Success?

“Success is not a matter of chance. Success is a matter of choice”.

Well said, but what constitutes ‘success’?

Mention the word ‘success’ and financial or material success would quickly spring to mind.

The rich are landed and often lorded by many who seek after money.

Someone aptly described the generation today as people who worship their work, work at their play and play at their religion.

In our “conspicuous consumption” society, many purchase what they don’t need with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like.

Many would agree that riches are highly valued in our capitalistic and materialistic world, and would count for success. But inquire further and there are several provisos.

The first proviso is health.

Many wealthy people who suffer from ill health have found out that health is more precious than wealth. Hence, the oft-heard advice: “Don’t trade your health for wealth”.

Indeed, pain – physical, emotional and mental – will spoil one’s enjoyment of wealth, even if wealth does pay for health bills.

The second proviso is death.

Death is the enemy of wealth in more than the literal sense. Besides the fact that “naked came I from my mother’s womb, naked I return thither”, there are also hefty death taxes in many countries.

There is also the stern Biblical warning that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, which means that death ushers in the eternal specter of suffering.

In the Biblical parable of the wealthy farmer who became immensely successful and wanted to store up for years to come, God called him “fool” because his soul would be required of him and who then would enjoy his wealth?

But other than sickness and early death, material success has other potential drawbacks also.

Often, the love and pursuit of money are at the expense of other arguably more important things in life – marriage, parenting, family, friends, hobbies, recreation, etc.

One rich doctor said wryly, “Yes I have the money but not the time to enjoy using it”.

How true that the poor have the poor man’s problems and the rich have the rich man’s problems. This is not just the stuff of novels and movies, but art truly reflects life here.

The thing that everyone wants is, “Can I have wealth and also all the other blessings – good health, a love-filled marriage and a closely knitted family and time to enjoy my wealth doing the things I love best?”

Well apparently yes, and I know of many who have for the moment (at least until the next surprise that life often brings) achieved this seemingly utopian state.

There is a proverb that says that God can increase your wealth and adds no trouble to it, meaning that if you accumulate wealth in your own way, trouble will come with it.

There are also many stories of people getting rich the legal and perhaps even ethical way, but becoming proud and arrogant and forgetting how they became rich, and were brought down to earth. Riches are uncertain and deceitful.

Getting rich is considered high risk not only financially, but more so spiritually. So much so that one wise man’s prayer is, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but just enough.”

The plain teaching of the Bible is that being blessed with riches simply means being trusted with more responsibility because we are mere stewards of the wealth and not rightful owners.

God looks to the rich to do “good works” and this includes helping the true poor and relieving suffering whenever possible. Not helping is a sin of omission and such help is to be given not grudgingly, but cheerfully. So it is not a case of forced communism but a voluntary community of brotherly love.

There are thankfully wonderful examples of rich people who have shared their lives and their financial resources with the poor. They are respected as saints by their community but often labeled as religious nuts by others of a different bent.

These have found the true riches and are said to be rich toward God, seeing the poor as God sees them and delighting in obeying God’s commandment to love their neighbours and even their enemies.

There are non-religious rich who do help the poor for “humanitarian” reasons and perhaps for other motives as well. Philanthropy generally brings respect and admiration, and salves the conscience and gives a good feeling of well-being besides reducing one’s tax liability.

Whatever the motive, society benefits from those who share their success.

Many rich give of their largesse and cannot be said to have sacrificed at all, while others truly give sacrificially. Jesus pointed to the widow who gave two small coins (which was all that she had) as having given more than the rich who gave more in quantity but much lesser than in percentage.

In fact, it has been pointed out that the true measure of giving is not what is given but what is left.

Just as success is not a matter of chance but a matter of choice, how you use your success is also not a matter of chance but a matter of choice. Real success comes from using your wealth in the “right” way.

But getting rich is not the measure of success as much as finding your life’s true calling, which is service – Serving God and serving men. And unto whom much is given, much is expected of him.