THE PARADOX OF SUCCESS

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THE PARADOX OF SUCCESS success, failure and
faith R. Paul Stevens
Dgb-success
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WHY COMPANIES FAIL

• Softened by success
• See no evil
• Fearing the boss more than the competition
• Overdosing on risk
• Acquisitions lust
• Listening to Wall Street more than employees
• Strategy du jour (silver bullet)
• A dangerous corporate culture
• The new economy death spiral
• A dysfunctional board (Fortune, May 27, 2002)

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WHY SUCCESS IS A PARADOX

• Because truly successful people may be failures
  (Midas everything he touched to each turned to
  gold Midas is starved) See Psalm 73 The Message
• Because failure may be success (Charles Colson
  in professional success he lost his soul in
  failure he succeeded.)
• Because faithful success is mysterious cannot
  be controlled, invented, planned.

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WHY SUCCESS IS A PARADOX

• Because where success is possessed it is lost.
  (Is the emphasis on the second half of life
  from success to significance right Buford?
  God has a wonderful plan for the second half of
  my life! Jesus response to the rich young ruler
  was not go and do something significant with it
  (Skip Li)

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WHY SUCCESS IS A PARADOX

• Because the pursuit of success is an especially
  direct road to true failure. On the road to
  success beware of arriving. The symptom of the
  person who has arrived is the loss of the ability
  to ask questions dead on arrival

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Stephen Coveys Research two divergent themes
in success literature

• 1. THE CHARACTER ETHIC
• 2. THE PERSONALITY ETHIC (the current dominant
  view)
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, p.
  18).

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Stephen Coveys Research two divergent themes
in success literature

• 1. THE CHARACTER ETHIC There are basic
  principles of effective living, andpeople can
  only experience true success and enduring
  happiness as they learn and integrate these
  principles into their basic character
  (integrity, humility, courage, justice, patience,
  industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule
  as basic principles of effective living, The
  Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, p. 18).

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Stephen Coveys Research two divergent themes
in success literature

• 2. (the current dominant view) THE PERSONALITY
  ETHIC Success is a function of personality, of
  public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills
  and techniques, that lubricate the process of
  human interaction (has taken two paths the
  human and public relation technique and the
  positive mental attitude, Seven Habits, p. 19).
  The problem with this is that success is
  something added to the person (such as
  independence, comfort) rather than something that
  grows out of the person.

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A HUMANE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

• How do you measure success? To laugh often and
  much To win the respect of intelligent people
  and the affection of children To earn the
  appreciation of honest critics and endure the
  betrayal of false friends To appreciate beauty
  To find the best in others To leave the world a
  bit better, whether by a healthy child, a
  redeemed social condition, or a job well done To
  know even one other life has breathed because you
  lived this is to have succeeded(Ralph Waldo
  Emerson).

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A CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

• At a stroke we learn that in Jesus Christ
  salvation is given to us, that God loved us
  before we did anything, that all is grace grace
  gracious gift, free gift. Life and salvation,
  resurrection and faith itself, glory and virtue,
  all is grace, all is attained already, all is
  done already and even our good works which we
  strive with great difficulty to perform have been
  prepared in advance that we should do them. It is
  all finished.of what use are these works? Why
  should we do them? Here again we come up against
  the same inutility, the same vanity, as we
  contemplate Gods omnipresence and stand in the
  perfect presence of his love.

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A CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

• And yet works are demanded of us they are Gods
  command and yet a useless service. If we are
  ready to be unworthy or unprofitable servants
  (although busy and active at the same time), then
  our works can truly redound to the glory of him
  who loved us first. God loved us because he is
  love and not to get results (Jacques Ellul,
  Meditation on Inutility, in The Politics of God
  and the Politics of Man, 190-199).

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A CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

• To live by grace beyond all criteria of
  effectiveness (Richard Neuhaus, Freedom for
  Ministry, 90).

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THE PARADOX OF SUCCESS

• A REFLECTION FROM THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES

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THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (QOHELETH-THE PREACHER)

• Sometimes the hunger for God takes the form of
  asking hard questions about the meaning of life.
• Admittedly a collection of fragments not unlike
  Pascals Pensees, Ecclesiastes contains question
  after question. Unlike Job, these are directed
  not to God, though God is not absent from the
  book, but rather to himself, or perhaps to an
  inquiring secularist.
• There are two ways of interpreting this book.
  Either Qoheleth, here, in translation called the
  Preacher or Professor, explores his own questions
  or he is, as an apologetic, raising the questions
  asked by a secularist who sees life under the
  sun without faith in a transcendent God.

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THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (QOHELETH-THE PREACHER)

• So the whole book could be considered an extended
  exposition of the curse caused by sin (Gen 316).
  Taken from this perspective, life under the sun
  has no absolute values (For who knows what is
  good for a man in life 612) and no certain
  future (Who can tell him what will happen under
  the sun after he is gone 612).

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THREE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS

• What does a man gain? (39)

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THREE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS

• What does a man gain? (39)
• Who knows what is good? (611)

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THREE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS

• What does a man gain? (39)
• Who knows what is good? (611)
• What will be after him? (612)

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ENCOUNTERING GOD IN THE HARD QUESTIONS OF LIFE

• WISDOM? - meaning not the wisdom of God but the
  wisdom of the world (112-18 224-315 7) and
  concludes that the attempt to conceive of an
  ordered system of reality will prove to be a puff
  of smoke(115). Qoheleth considers irrationality
  intellectual madness and concludes too that
  this is chasing after the wind (117).

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ENCOUNTERING GOD IN THE HARD QUESTIONS OF LIFE

• PLEASURE AND CULTURE? (21-23). The paradox of
  pleasure is that the more you hunt for it, the
  less of it you find. (Hendry). One must face
  the morning after and the nausea of satiety.

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ENCOUNTERING GOD IN THE HARD QUESTIONS OF LIFE

• WORK? (217-23). For all their late-night efforts
  people will leave the fruits of their work to
  others, who will probably be fools. And it wont
  stop with late nights at the office. Even at
  night his mind does not rest (223) and for
  what? The workaholic ultimately discovers the
  meaningless of living for work.

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• MONEY? If you love it you never have enough
  (510) and the rich person cannot sleep at night
  for worry (512).

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• SECULARIZED RELIGION? What secularized religion
  does is try to use God. There are lots of words,
  but they are empty and the worship of such
  vacuous chatter in the house of God is the
  sacrifice of fools (51).

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• DEATH (91-10). Whatever your hand finds to do,
  do it with all your might, for in the grave,
  where you are going, there is neither working,
  nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom (910).
  And what can we say to that? But the impact of
  his expanded exposition of the inevitable decay
  of youthful vigor to the dust returning to the
  ground it came from (127) leads not to
  remember you must die but rather remember your
  Creator (121), the very thing that is the
  irruption of hope in this otherwise bleak look at
  life under the sun.

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QOHELETHS EXPLORATION OF SUCCESS

• I undertook great projectshouses, vineyards,
  garden and parks, reservoirs, slavesherds and
  flocksamassed silver and goldacquired men and
  women singersand a harem. Yet when I surveyed
  all that my hands had done, and what I had toiled
  to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing
  after the wind nothing was gained under the sun
  (24-11).

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QOHELETHS EXPLORATION OF SUCCESS

• So I hated life, because the work that is done
  under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is
  meaningless, a chasing after the windI must
  leave them to the one who comes after mehe will
  have the control over all the worka man must
  leave all he owns to someone who has not worked
  for iteven at night his mind does not rest
  (223).

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QOHELETHS EXPLORATION OF SUCCESS

• I saw that all labor and all achievement spring
  from mans envy of his neighbor (44).
• There was a man all alone he had neither son
  nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet
  his eyes were not content with his wealth. For
  whom am I toiling, he asked, and why am I
  depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is
  meaningless a miserable business (48).

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 1. WE ARE TO WORK NOT TO BE USEFUL (OR TO PROVE
  OUR IDENTITY) BUT BECAUSE IT IS A GIFT OF GOD
• A man can do nothing better than to eat and
  drink and find satisfaction in his work. This
  too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without
  him, who can eat pr find enjoyment. To the man
  who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and
  happiness (224-25).
• Everyone should eat and drink, and find
  satisfaction in all his toil this is the gift
  of God (313).

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 2. THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN MATERIAL SUCCESS
  (WHICH WILL ALWAYS LET US DOWN)
• Whoever loves money never has enough, whoever
  loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
  This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do
  those who consume them. And what benefit are they
  to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?
  The sleep of a laborer is sweetbut the abundance
  of a rich man permits him no sleep (510-12).

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 3. WE ARE TO GET INTO LIFE EVEN THOUGH ALL OUR
  PROJECTS AND EVEN OUR BODIES ARE DOOMED TO THE
  GRAVE
• Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all
  your might, for in the grave, where you are
  going, there is neither working, nor planning no
  knowledge nor wisdom (910).

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 4. TAKE THE RISK OF INVESTING (AND DONT WAIT
  AROUND FOR THE PERFECT SITUATION) BUT DONT PUT
  ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET
• Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many
  days you will find it again.Give portions to
  seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what
  disaster may come upon the land.Whoever watches
  the wind will not plant whoever looks at the
  clouds will not reap (111-4).

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 5. WORK IS AN EVANGELIST TO TAKE US TO GOD (WHO
  ALONE CAN FILL THE GOD-SHAPED VACUUM IN OUR SOULS
  
• Our work is temporary, unappreciated it will be
  taken over by a fool we will experience
  injustice it is just plain hard (222, 18, 19,
  21, 22). But it is Gods will that our work is
  useless. If the Professor is right, then we
  will not find satisfaction in our work through
  faith in God (the current Christian work
  heresy) instead we will find our satisfaction in
  God through our experience of work. It is a
  subtle and telling distinction.

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QOHELETHS CONCLUSIONS

• 6. INVEST IN ETERNITY IN THE MIDST OF YOUR LIFE
  HERE AND NOW (LAY UP TREASURES IN HEAVEN) AND
  FIND GOD IN THE MIDST OF YOUR WORK AND LIFE
• He has made everything beautiful in its time. He
  has set eternity in the hearts of men.I know
  that everything God does will endure forever
  nothing can be added to it and nothings taken
  from it. God does this so that men will revere
  him (311-14).

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BEYOND QOHELETH

• THERE IS NO WORD FOR SUCCESS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
  (except for the names of two women, success
  Eudia and lucky Syntyche Phil 42. An
  other word in the Old and New Testaments is
  blessed (Deut 1126-28 Matt 53-12) the
  inner riches of personal character conformed to
  Gods character (Girard, 363).

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BEYOND QOHELETH

• The ultimate goal for humankind in the Bible is
  righteousness right relations with God,
  neighbour and creation (Seek first his kingdom
  and his righteousness Matt 633).
• Gods evaluation of success is a scandalous
  inversion of human values (the widow and her mite
  Mk 1242 the publican at prayer Lk 1814).

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BEYOND QOHELETH

• If we were successful we might not know it (we
  have a humble God who takes the way of downward
  mobility Phil 26-11)
• We are to lay up for ourselves treasures in
  heaven (Matt 619).
• The only treasure we can take from this life to
  the next is the relationships we have made
  through Christ (Lk 169).

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BEYOND QOHELETH

• Jesus suggests that the successful person (in
  terms of human achievement) is a stunning failure
  and a fool (Lk 1220)
• The worlds success story concludes with Gods
  disclosure of the ultimate failure of worldly
  success (Rev 18 (Girard, 365).

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THE THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS OF FAILURE (Robert Girard)

• Pressure produces sterling character (Rom 52-5)
• Jesus emerges through our struggles (2 Cor
  47-18)
• Gods power is visible in weak people (2 Cor
  127-10).
• Difficulties move us toward destiny (Rom 828-9)
• Through failures people move from bragging to
  brokenness (Lk 2254-62, Girard, 365-6).

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BEYOND QOHELETH

• The greatest failure (which might be experienced
  by an otherwise successful person) might be to be
  unrecognized by Jesus (I never knew you Matt
  723 2512).
• The ultimate success is to enter into the joy of
  the master (Matt 2521) and to hear Well done,
  good and faithful servant! Matt 2523

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STEVE BRINN (Trillium Corp)

• Stand on your heads every morning to understand
  that we have everything upside down in the
  business world. The big deals are not the big
  deals in the kingdom. Read fairy tales
  constantly blow the lid off the limits to see
  that everything is possible. Dont flee the
  scenes of your failures grieve, reflect,
  reflect, learn. Give yourself time. It takes a
  long time to find out who you are in business.
  Break out of lifestyle enclaves. Join a
  revolutionary movement of some kind in your life.
  Never give up on things that matter.

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FOR REFLECTION

• The failure that God has redeemed in my life
  is..
• The success that is a temptation for me is..
• What God has been addressing in my life through
  this process is.

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REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

• Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly
  Successful People (New York Simon Shuster,
  1989).
• Jacques Ellul, Reason for Being A Meditation on
  Ecclesiastes, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand
  Rapids Eerdmans, DATE).
• Robert Girard, Failure, in Banks and Stevens
  eds., The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity
  (Downers Grove InterVarsity Press, 1997).
• G.S. Henry, Ecclesiastes, in F. Davidson, A.M.
  Stibbs and E.F. Kevan, eds. New Bible Commentary
  (London Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1961)..
• Derek Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job
  Ecclesiastes (Downers Grove InterVarsity Press,
  1985).
• Hal Miller, Success, in Banks and Stevens, eds.
  The Complete Book