Success, Failure….and Sin
Years ago there was a weekly sports show. It began with a video clip of an athlete succeding and another athlete failing…..spectacularly. We live every day with success and failure. Typically we set a goal, work toward it, and we either achieve it…..or not. We succeed or we fail. By the time we get to work in the morning, we have succeeded or failed a dozen or so times: shower, leave the house, find a parking spot, arrive on time, etc. These are small successes. There are bigger goals…..bigger successes and failures: graduate college, find a mate, raise a family, retire, etc. Today, I want to focus on success/failure on an even larger scale.
Globally……is your life a success?
Taken as a whole, has your life achieved its goal?
I always told my sons, “the first step in solving a problem is to accurately identify the problem”. The first step in measuring the success of your life is to accurately identify your goal. If your life was a business, this would be your “mission statement”.
So, as a human being, what is your goal in life……your mission statement? I’ll give you a clue. If you can’t clearly state it in one sentence…..in the next three seconds…….you don’t have one. And if you don’t have a goal for your life, your life is going to be a failure…….even if you drive a Ferrari. This is why we have mid-life crises. This is why we lie on our death bed with regrets.
This is the great failure of secular humanism. SH has a great many short and medium term goals……many of them noble. What it lacks is a cohesive, global, achievable, long term goal……a goal that applies to every last one of us. The increasing conflict and craziness in our world grows out of us all pursuing conflicting personal goals. We abort our children……we bomb abortion clinics. We go to war.
Christianity is different. Christianity offers a unifying goal that applies to every one of us:
Draw closer to our creator……God.
How’s that for a mission statement?
Which brings me to the flip side of today’s post:
What is failure?
Failure, writ large, is like the guy on the ski jump. We set a goal and fail to reach it. Small goals lead to small failures. Medium size goals lead to medium size failures.
Global failures lead to failed lives.
If my goal is to draw closer to God, then anything that I say, do, or even think that doesn’t achieve that goal is a failure……..and it happens every day.
And failure to draw close to my creator is a very good working definition……..of sin.
For the Christian, the opposite of success……..is sin.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.
Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, advice to a young demon
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Jesus, Mathew 6:33, ESV
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you
Isaiah, 59:2, ESV