Isn’t that what most parents want? We want our children to grow, to succeed, to thrive. We want them to be happy……all day…..every day. We are proud of them when they succeed. We are proud of ourselves when they succeed. We brag about our children when they succeed. My father was proud of me and wanted me to take over the family business. My mother was proud of my achievements. She repeatedly asked me how much money I made. This was the metric she used to measure my success…….and, indirectly, her success. For most of my life I have used my mother’s success scale. I suspect that most parents do: a good high paying job, a stable career, recognition by our peers, a good wife, a suburban house with a white picket fence.
By my mother’s calculation, my children were abject failures. Two of my sons died in their 20’s. The third is in prison. Ask a hundred observers to score the sucess of my family and we would not do very well.
But, are we using the right metric? Was I using the correct yardstick to measure the success of my children?
I think not.
I’m not kidding myself. My sons took a long tortous route to get to where they are now. They did not score well on my mother’s scale. I remember sitting in my house one Christmas eve with a Boone County deputy discussing how to deal with a smashed mailbox. I remember posting bail on multiple occasions. I didn’t tell my mother. Only recently, have I realized that my mother was using the wrong scale. So was I.
The Bible offers us some guidance. You probably guessed that corporate position, community adulation, and net worth are not part of God’s metric for a successful life.
The Bible teaches that success is defined by spending eternity with our creator…….God…….who loves us and wants us to succeed even more than our parents. How do we go about acheiving that?
The guidance from the Old Testament:
“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8, ESV
The guidance from the New Testament:
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Jesus explaining eternity, John, 3:36, ESV
This changes everything. My mother’s metric for success was worldly and temporal. It applies, but only to the brief period of our physical life. God’s metric, like God, is eternal. It applies to both our temporal physical life and to our eternal spiritual life.
My mother wasn’t wrong. But, neither is God.
Both metrics are valid. The key point is in understanding their period of validity. My mother’s metric works during our physical life; but, becomes completely irrelevant at death. God’s metric is eternal. You can follow or reject my mother’s metric. The consequences are extremely limited.
But, if you reject God’s metric, the consequences are eternal…….and they are catastrophic.
I have no doubt that my mother would have called my sons a disappointment. They did follow a pretty twisted path and to a degree still are. But, in the end, they recognized and accepted Jesus. By God’s metric, my sons were successful.
By God’s metric………I have been a successful parent.
And that is all that counts.