Article September 7, 1987 Issue

Success—viewed and achieved spiritually

Much has been said about how
to succeed, about how to reach
our personal goals without stress
and burnout. But what about the power
of unselfish motives, of love
and purity? Are they dead weight
in a successful life?

Isabel F. Bates

Probably most of us at one time or another have wanted to achieve some degree of personal success, even personal status and popularity. But mortal, self-centered personality by its very nature is hard to satisfy. Its tendency is to want more and more of whatever it values, and then when it thinks it has hit the top in personal achievements and possessions, it may complain of the void it finds there.

"I made me great works," says the Preacher in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes; "I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards." And he goes on to tell how he acquired servants, cattle, silver and gold, and every material thing he wanted. "So I was great," he adds, "and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem." "Then," he concludes, "I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."^{Eccl. 2:4, 9, 11.}

Here, certainly, was an empty sense of success! The fact is that ambition based on satisfying a mortal sense of ourselves can neither bring any stable peace to us nor ensure enduring benefits to mankind.

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