Posts Tagged: the powerlessness of success

“The Powerlessness of Success”

On June 28, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“We are just as powerless over our successes as we are over the worst of our behaviors. We can only be faithful to our duties and ourselves. The successes, which flow from our work, come and go. Since we can’t nail them down, they may make us feel insecure. Many a man has destroyed his moment of success because he couldn’t stand the powerless feeling. We must return to our program and allow success to rise and fall, as it will.

Today, I turn to my Higher Power for help in accepting success.”  (Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men)

I don’t always handle failure well.  I am generally about as unsuccessful at handling success.  Let me explain.

One of my favorite Paul Simon songs is titled “Something So Right.”  It could be the theme song for my life.

“When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
I’m the first to admit it
But the last one to know
When something goes right
Well it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
I can’t get used to something so right
Something so right”

I have known for quite some time that I don’t handle successes well.  I had never thought about why.  I think that this Hazelden reading hit the nail squarely on the head: Successes make me feel out of control.

But the deeper problem is not success, or feeling out of control, or even being out of control.  No, the problem is wanting to be in control in the first place, and thinking that I should be.  This has plagued me since the Garden of Eden.

So, here is the deal: I need to give up the illusion that I am or ought to be in control.  But how do I do that?  Giving up anything—even illusions—is not easy.  Giving up the illusion of control makes me feel very out-of-control.

Perhaps I need to pull out an old theological idea from my mental attic: the sovereignty of God.  The Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, indicate that ultimately, God is the One who is in control.  The Bible affirms this bizarre notion, even as the Bible portrays the importance of human choice.  And, of course, the Bible also portrays how often we screw up and choose foolishly.  (If you think that the Bible tells us the way things should be, in some perfect world, you haven’t read the Bible.  Perhaps the first two chapters and the last chapters do that, but there’s a lot of other really awful stuff in the 1185 chapters between those four chapters.)

If I think more and count more upon the sovereignty of God, I can relax a little.  Perhaps then, neither failures nor successes will mess with my mind quite as much.  Sometimes, I start my day with the following confession: God is God, I am not, and that is good.  That is a good confession, no matter what the day throws at you, whether that be failure or (God forbid!?) success.

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