One of the most pervasive and pernicious cults in the world is the Cult of Success.
Jesus died on the Cross and called it “victory.” Absorb that for a moment. How easily we forget that the fundamental Laws of God predict we who embrace His moral character will live as a besieged minority. So while I could promote the divine moral justice God revealed as the panacea for all human ills, the Laws of God presume humanity will not listen. Thus, the Laws of God prepare us for dealing with an ongoing disaster.
Yes, we who seek to live His Laws will tend to exhibit a level and type of temporal success unavailable any other way. However, the meaning of “success” changes radically when viewed through revelation. The substance of success is His glory, a paradoxical concept that defies explanation and quantifying. We are assured that our desire to adhere to God’s revelation is success, that it does bring Him glory, without ever explaining in concrete terms what all of it means.
Rejoice in the blessings of the Law, but never get lost in them. Never presume to sell the Law based on generalized results. That wasn’t sufficient to keep Israel on track. The revealed history of the Covenant of Moses survives in part to show just that. Just because you can explain how the Laws of God work and can provide the full intellectual framework necessary to understand it, and prove it all with concrete support, it does not mean people are going to buy it. Humanity cannot possibly ever be rational even to the standard of reason they can devise for themselves, much less the standard of logic coming down out of Heaven.
The inevitable conflict between our driving sense of cosmic morality and the rest of the world is a mark of “success.”
