The Wrong Idea of Success

To be very active or involved in lots of activities is often viewed as a good thing. We should encourage our children to be participants in as much or many activities as they and their parents can handle. Karen was one of those students who was certainly gifted. She had about 5.3GPA, 1400 on her SAT’s, and was a great kid. I was the faculty advisor for the Student Interact Club of Rotary International, Karen was my vice-president. She did a fantastic job, extremely diligent and hard working. The problem was that she was involved with many other clubs. She was an active officer in at least twenty clubs. I never met a person so focused or so involved, or so driven to be successful. I couldn’t understand how she had time to be so involved and at the same time so successful. She was absolutely over involved, and she could not stop.

After she graduated from high school she wound up at a prestigious local college on a full scholarship. She was again doing very well. Then I remember seeing her around semester break. She seemed different, more stressed, and not herself. She was now the lead singer for a rock band, a dream come true.

As her experience in the band grew and her use of alcohol and drugs became serious, she started to hang out with “friends” who were not friends at all. As her life quickly became out of control more problems developed. She quit school to spend more time with the band. When her mother confronted her with the drastic changes, major problems developed. Karen and her mother had a fight, a really bad fight, and a fight that became violent. Karen left the house. She did, however, return, this time with a shotgun. She did shoot and kill her own mother just so she could stay with a boyfriend in a band. I visited Karen in prison. She was not remorseful. She actually blamed the prosecutor’s office for forcing her to admit guilt, despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. I offered her a Bible Study and made arrangements for my wife to see her in prison, to this day as far as I am aware, she has refused.

I believe that Karen was a talented girl, who had good intentions, but had wrong motives, wrong friends, and wrong idea of success. Obviously, there are many other issues that could be brought up but suffice it to say here that success can never be defined as who you are or what you have accomplished. True success has to be focused on the right thing the right way. All the officer positions, all the accolades of a rock band, all the notoriety of her involvement in good things really did not matter. Not one of them. None of them could ever come close to filling the void that only a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can fill. It does not take very long for a decent, good kid to become involved with things that have a very bad and traumatic ending.

Karen’s situation is not typical in the sense that most people do not respond with the anger that she did. But what is typical is how quickly a life can change. Karen went from a bright and shining star to a prison inmate, to be in prison for the rest of her life. Why? because her focus was on the wrong concept of success. Success is not in achievement of goals, but rather in acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?  (Mt. 16:26)

In His Name,

Bro. Bob P.