Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

An old Jewish saying puts it like this: “When I get to heaven nobody will ask me why I was not more like Moses (the great Jewish hero). I will be asked why I was not more like myself”. In other words, success does not mean being somebody else, measuring up to somebody else’s standard, but to be all we could be. That is what it means to be successful, fulfilling our vocation. But how do you do that, when so much of life feels like a struggle to survive, and weekends like my last one are so far and few between. For some of us it might mean doing more of what we instinctively know to be right, and dropping activities which are meaningless. For others of us it might mean not being so concerned with what others think, and measuring our lives more in currency such as truth, justice and love. And for all of us it means realizing that quite often success or failure will only be apparent when we have finished running the race.

For Christians, the ultimate story of seeming failure is that of Jesus Christ. While his birth was surrounded by somewhat amazing events, his youth was singularly uneventful. He never made it beyond trade school and worked as a carpenter. Only at age 30 did he finally get out from home and started to do something different. He founded an NGO, though some of its initial members were dubious characters. They had some initial successes and gathered large crowds. But three years into their work they started getting investigated by the religious supervising authorities which eventually lead to a big lawsuit. In the process his chief financial officer was convicted of taking bribes. As he gets found out he hangs himself. Jesus’ chief executive officer denies ever having worked with him and most of his co-workers run away, one so quickly that he does not even have time to dress. Because the regime he lived under was less lenient than most of today’s Western democracies he is condemned to death and executed.

But already during Jesus’ execution one member of the military establishment wonders whether he was not innocently killed, and two of the Supreme Court judges decide to pay for his funeral. On the third day some of the women who did not deny him claim that he is alive and back. A week later they hold their first new shareholder meeting, and fifty days later, on the feast of Pentecost, they get 3000 new members. Only 300 years later they launch a take-over bid of the very Roman Empire which executed their founder.

Since then they have spread into just about every country in the world: there is probably a branch very near you. The largest gatherings in human history were run by Jesus’ organization, the funeral of one their recent chairmen of the board was the largest ever, and the sales figures of his memoirs make Harry Potter seem like a blip in the screen. Not bad for somebody whose life seemed a bit of a failure!

Ever since his followers have embraced unpopular causes, always under the motto “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit”. In other words, rather than chasing this elusive thing called “success” they pursued what they thought was their vocation, often at the cost of being unpopular, of suffering, or of seeing precious little fruit in their lifetime. And as they pursued their vocation, as they aimed at “being more themselves”, their lives became a success.

So how are you going to be successful today?

# posted by tino @ Tuesday, May 01, 2007