TTT #27 The New Testament Word for Success is Faithfulness

While I intend for my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT) to be relevant for everyone and not just for Christian believers, this article taken from the first part of the 27^th chapter of TTT (and found in full here) is primarily about Christians (for good or for ill). But I trust it will also be of interest and instructive to those of other faiths, or of no faith.

Disliking Failure

Failure is a word we hate to hear. During their school days, little seemed worse for most people than getting an “F” on a test or on their report card.

And in real life, failure is a fear for those who go into business for themselves as well as for those who go into non-profit service activities. Failure for either usually means loss of income as well as loss of self-esteem.

Since in the world of religion this seems to be more of an issue for Christians than those of other faiths, this article/chapter is mostly about success and failure as related to Christianity.

Liking Success

Because of the fear of failure, through the years there has been a spate of books, many from a Christian or semi-Christian perspective, written about how to succeed. Some of the most widely read are Acres of Diamonds (1915), Think and Grow Rich (1937), The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), and The Success Principles (2005).

Success, as we who live in the United States all know, is often measured either in terms of dollars or in terms of numbers of people. In the business world no one who has not become fairly wealthy would be considered a success.

In the Christian world, successful churches are generally considered those that have had considerable numerical growth and boast large attendance at their regular meetings, and the pastors of such churches are generally considered successful.

Most people in the U.S., for example, would consider Joel Osteen, pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston, a huge success.

The church of which Osteen (b. 1963) is pastor is the largest in the U.S. In 2017 the weekly attendance of his church was 43,500. Moreover, his ministry is said to reach over seven million broadcast media viewers weekly in over 100 nations around the world.

Not only is Osteen successful, but he seeks to help others achieve success also. He also has written several books and regularly posts articles on the Lakewood Church blog.

Some of his articles, especially in past years, were expressions of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” according to which financial success can be expected to result from proper or adequate faith—although many have serious questions about that understanding of success.

Being Faithful

Years ago I heard, and agreed, that the New Testament word for success is faithfulness. Certainly the NT does not speak about success as being defined the number of dollars one has made or the number of members attending a given church.

Many of the great Christian missionaries were quite “unsuccessful.” That is how Francis Xavier thought about his work in Japan in the years following his arrival there in 1549. (Many later missionaries, though, thought he was quite “successful.”)

For many years following his arrival in India in 1793, William Carey was “unsuccessful”—as were Adoniram and Ann Judson for years following their arrival in Burma in 1813.

But they all realized that the New Testament word for success is faithfulness—as did Mother Teresa of Calcutta. So I close this article with her oft-quoted words: 

Saint Teresa: The Good and the Questionable

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was given that name at the time of her birth on August 26, 1910. Most people around the world, however, have for decades known her as Mother Teresa.

On September 4, this coming Sunday, during a canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis will declare Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

By many people, though, Mother Teresa has been thought of as a saint for a long time. Back in 1975 the cover story of the December 29 issue of Time magazine was titled “Living Saints.” Mother Teresa’s picture was on the cover of that issue.

As a Protestant, it is not hard to understand the meaning of “saint” in the popular sense, such as that term was used in the Time article. But people being saints in the Catholic sense is a little more difficult—especially when it involves their veneration, which we Protestants sometimes incorrectly think is the worship of saints.

Recently, though, in commenting on the legacy of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson wrote, “The canonization of Kolbe makes me think that the Church’s singling out of certain saints has real value in challenging the rest of us to live our faith.”

Or, as it is sometimes said, saints are special people who by their lives help us to understand God better. Accordingly, by looking at Saint Teresa’s loving service to the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta we should be able to understand God’s love better.  

When she was 40 years old, Mother Teresa was given permission by the Pope to begin a congregation called Missionaries of Charity. From their small beginning in 1950, that group grew into a large worldwide organization.

Because of their meritorious work, starting in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then expanding to many countries, Mother Teresa became known around the world. As one indication of how esteemed she became for what had done through the years, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

There are some questionable aspects of Mother Teresa’s life and work, however. For example, I have serious misgivings about some things she has said—such as her extreme words opposing abortion. In her Nobel Lecture she declared that “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.”

In that speech Mother Teresa went on to assert that abortion “is a direct war, a direct killing—direct murder by the mother herself.”

Highly questionable statements!

Mother Teresa’s greatest strength was the loving service she provided for the sick and the dying who were living in poverty. Perhaps her greatest weakness was lack of action—or even talk—regarding the causes of poverty. She did a marvelous job of taking care of victims; she did little in seeking to reduce the number of victims.

To her credit, in her Nobel Lecture Mother Teresa reported that she and her co-workers were teaching “natural family planning” to “our beggars, our leprosy patients, our slum dwellers.” Elsewhere she claimed that such teaching given to three thousand families was “95 percent effective” (No Greater Love, pp. 127-8).

Still, how many more unwanted pregnancies might she have prevented if she had been willing to teach and provide the means for “artificial birth control”? She could not do that, of course, as a Catholic.

But no one, not even a saint, is perfect, and Mother Teresa did demonstrate great Christian love throughout her lifetime. So please rejoice with me this weekend as Mother Teresa is canonized, publically acknowledged as a saint.