God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

On a recent flight I read an intriguing interview in MyMIDWEST with former New Hampshire State Senator Jim Rubens regarding his new book, OverSuccess: Healing the American Obsession with Wealth, Fame, Power, and Perfection. Mr Rubens’ story is itself an interesting one, but the details of his book bear repeating here.

OverSuccess

According to Mr Rubens, there is a mass cultural phenomenon causing Americans to measure success exclusively by externals, such as wealth, fame, power and physical perfection. He calls this phenomenon “OverSuccess.” Mr Rubens suggests a “global economy” and “pervasive, celebrity-saturated media” as culprits in driving “success benchmarks” to stratospheric levels. These benchmarks re-engineer the metrics of success and the definition of the good life. As a result,

We are pedaling harder to reach increasingly unreachable status goals, leading to unsustainable consumer and business debt loans, rising dissatisfaction with life, deteriorating social and family relationships, pervasive ethical decline, rising substance and behavioral addictions.

A Science-based Recipe for Happiness

Mr Rubens then discusses what he calls a “science-based recipe for happiness.” The list is as follows:

1. Have control over the major elements of your life
2. Select major goals for which you are 50 percent likely to succeed given your skills, intelligence, resources and social network, rather than goals that are either too easy or too difficult
3. Focus on the process of reaching goals, not just achievement
4. Do purposeful, meaningful work and activity in which you can grow
5. Be of service to something larger than self
6. Find faith, spirituality or religion
7. Be married, since 40 percent of married people say they are very happy compared with 24 percent of those unmarried
8. Live a rich social life with multiple strong friendships
9. Get sufficient sleep and aerobic exercise
10. Act happy to be happy

Two Observations

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Mr Rubens’ culprits or his “science-based recipe for happiness,” allow me two observations.

1) The list beguiles the innate human quest for community and self-transcendence. We can never truly be at home with ourselves when we ourselves are the home—tawdry temples to our isolated selves. I think T. S. Eliot hinted as much in his poem, “Hollow Men,” where he wrote:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men

Hollow yet stuffed with all manner of silly and unsatisfactory “straw.”

According to the Christian confession, however, it is in the community of faith where we become truly at home with ourselves and with each other, where we become a “holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21). Hallowed and Holy (1 Corinthians 1:2), filled with a sure and steady hope, “stuffed” with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). It is in union with Christ that the human longing for community and self-transcendence is realized at last.

2) Whether we are aware of it or not, there is an outright war over who gets to define “success.” There is some irony in this story in that my flight originated in Manhattan, a monument to success. But what is success? And who gets to define it? While success benchmarks are of course both entirely natural and often helpful—e.g. a manager’s use of statistical evaluation to determine a batting lineup or pitching rotation or a trader’s measuring financial turn on investment to evaluate market share—they should also be held in suspicion. Who is defining it? Once success is defined, desired outcomes and lifestyles are set for many. In this sense, they can become totalizing and subsuming.

The gospel deconstructs success (Luke 9:25), turning the world on its head, shaming the “wise things” of this world with the “foolishness” of a crucified savior (1 Corinthians 1:20-29). And we as the community of faith should practice a proper Chardinian incredulity toward the metanarrative of “OverSuccess.” The benchmark of “OverSuccess” is a power play, a strong hold that needs to be torn down (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

Three Questions

Upon finishing the article and later skimming through the book, I noted three questions to myself to consider and offer them to you to consider as well.

1. Does the gospel suggest a metric of success? If so, what is it?
2. What are the metrics of success operative in your life, vocation, and community and who is defining it?
3. How can the gospel deconstruct the totalizing metanarrative of “OverSuccess”?