Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Suffering and Success - Career
My friend David Wayne, Jollyblogger, can really inspire me from time-to-time. He certainly did so when he wrote this post on how Christians are called to suffer more than succeed. This lead me to wonder is suffering was not in fact a measure of Christian success. So far, I have examined that possibility, well reality actually, in terms of personal ministry and church and blogging. Today I want to look at the ramifications of that metric in terms of our careers.
As the leader of a Bible study for high school students I am struck by how much pressure kids feel today, as kids, about career. "Gotta get good grades, gotta get it the right college so I can have a good career." Most of the kids are clueless about what they want to do for a career, and if they are like most of us, their education will end up only nominally related to whatever career they do end up having. The latest statistics show that most people change careers several times in their adult lives. So why all the pressure?
I think this lies at the heart of the metric we use for success. The equation seems to be pretty straightforward: education = career options = financial reward = success. But I don't think this equation holds. I think it is best illustrated by a parable.
There were two good friends. They met in junior high school. They hung together all the way through college. The one friend was driven to be a doctor and worked very hard to acheive that goal, and with it came seeming financial and family success. By age 30 his income was well in the 6-figures and some years closer to a million dollars than it was from it. He had a wife and lovely children. By age 38 he was divorced and for the rest of his life hated by different of his children at different times until his death. Yes he was dead by age 48, had a little too much to drink and the story ended in an all to familiar way. He left his children quite well off, but that was about all he left them.
The other friend was not nearly so driven, Despite great academic success, he wandered from career to career until his 30's when he finally started his own business on a shoestring. For years the business survived, but money for anything fun, fancy, or simply entertaining was hard to come by. This friend was not so lucky in love. He was quite old by the time he found the woman he would marry, which left him and his wife childless. Regardless, he and his wife found great love with each other and moderate financial reward eventually came.
As I look at the friends, I see one that rushed to "success," achieved his desires, and lost it in a pile of great suffering that terminated everything. In the other I see someone that suffered some thoughout his life, but found happiness, love, and joy in the suffering.
Who do you think succeeded?
Part VI of the series is here.
Related Tags: suffering, success, career, parable
As the leader of a Bible study for high school students I am struck by how much pressure kids feel today, as kids, about career. "Gotta get good grades, gotta get it the right college so I can have a good career." Most of the kids are clueless about what they want to do for a career, and if they are like most of us, their education will end up only nominally related to whatever career they do end up having. The latest statistics show that most people change careers several times in their adult lives. So why all the pressure?
I think this lies at the heart of the metric we use for success. The equation seems to be pretty straightforward: education = career options = financial reward = success. But I don't think this equation holds. I think it is best illustrated by a parable.
There were two good friends. They met in junior high school. They hung together all the way through college. The one friend was driven to be a doctor and worked very hard to acheive that goal, and with it came seeming financial and family success. By age 30 his income was well in the 6-figures and some years closer to a million dollars than it was from it. He had a wife and lovely children. By age 38 he was divorced and for the rest of his life hated by different of his children at different times until his death. Yes he was dead by age 48, had a little too much to drink and the story ended in an all to familiar way. He left his children quite well off, but that was about all he left them.
The other friend was not nearly so driven, Despite great academic success, he wandered from career to career until his 30's when he finally started his own business on a shoestring. For years the business survived, but money for anything fun, fancy, or simply entertaining was hard to come by. This friend was not so lucky in love. He was quite old by the time he found the woman he would marry, which left him and his wife childless. Regardless, he and his wife found great love with each other and moderate financial reward eventually came.
As I look at the friends, I see one that rushed to "success," achieved his desires, and lost it in a pile of great suffering that terminated everything. In the other I see someone that suffered some thoughout his life, but found happiness, love, and joy in the suffering.
Who do you think succeeded?
Part VI of the series is here.
Related Tags: suffering, success, career, parable
