Reflections
NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS
By Pete Hammond
According to King Solomon, having it all gets you nothing.
What does an aggressive, successful entrepreneur have to say to people of faith? An awful lot, if he is honest and thoughtful. After all, over-achievers learn plenty of lessons on their road to riches. They can tell us better than anyone what it feels like to succeed and whether it's as satisfying as it seems.
This is particularly important in America today. As author Laurence Shames points out, in this country the "ethic of decency has been upstaged by the ethic of success....the exclusive worship of the bitch goddess Success...is our national disease." 1
The best wisdom on how to deal with this problem comes from our elders who have lived through it. Theirs is an understanding gained from years of struggle, pain, failure, and discovery whether they were builders, lovers, international statesmen, writers, CEO's, or military leaders.
Solomon, of course, was all of those and more. In fact, he seems to be the Bible's senior statesman of "lessons learned the hard way."
Although Solomon was the privileged child of a father of deep faith, he ultimately decided to do things his own way. In the end, he writes with great pain, apt descriptions and brilliant insight gained in the fiery crucible of a rebellious life.
Solomon was the son of King David and Bathsheba one of his dad's lovers acquired through a murderous palace love affair. He lived with the pressure of having a famous father, a confusing family structure, and a very ambitious mom. She engineered her son's ascent to his dad's position by beating out his brother Adonijah even as her husband lay dying.
While Solomon was in power, the surrounding nations were weak. So he was able to give unbridled expression to his ambition by immersing himself in unparalleled building projects. Whether it meant importing materials, conscripting forced labor, making extravagant expenditures--his buildings were going to be the biggest and the best. He built the central temple, expansive new government headquarters, new city walls, three fortress cities and several storage cities.
Internationally, his reputation for trading and wisdom was tremendous. Egypt's queen of Sheba paid him a royal visit, both to test his wits and to show off trade samples (her famous caravan described in 1 Kings 10:2 was probably as much a traveling show as it was a gravy train for the King). He imported horses and chariots from her, natural resources and skilled artisans from Tyre, and even created his own navy. The position of his little nation as the land bridge between the Egyptian empire and the northern nations of Babylon, Tyre, and Assyria was strategic, and he took full advantage of it.
As a lover, Solomon led the pack. His acquisition of women boggles the mind. His sensual expressions were graphic and beautiful (as seen in the Song of Solomon).
As a writer, he was prodigious, producing 3000 proverbs (Proverbs 1:1, 10:1a, 25:1), 1005 songs, lectures on botany and biology, Psalms like 72 and 127, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes.
By any measure, then, Solomon was one of the most successful people who ever lived. Yet he gained little satisfaction from his accomplishments. And in Ecclesiastes, the empty result of his ambition is laid bare. Here we come face to face with his restless and troubled heart. We see the futility of work, pleasure, and wealth when it is pursued without dependence on God. As Peter Kreeft states, "It is like a collage of photos taken through the porthole of a sinking ship." 2
When success is an end in itself, Ecclesiastes tells us, life is toilsome, exhausting and empty. Nothing seems to satisfy no matter how extensive your efforts, resources, or acquisitions. "All is vanity," or as one of my teachers once paraphrased it, "Soap bubbles are soap bubbles. All are soap bubbles."
Here is the only book in all of Scripture where God is not heard from. In other words, Ecclesiastes is the ultimate expression of a Monday through Friday life that is disconnected from the church-related events of Sunday.
Yet the same candor and honesty that drives Solomon to be so bleak is also his redeeming quality. Because a man of great privilege and achievement has reflected on his life without hypocrisy, we are able to identify with him, learn from him, and be warned by him.
In your struggle to set priorities in the areas of work and wealth, in your longing to find meaning in your life, Solomon is a wonderful mentor simply because he keeps no secrets. Read him and learn from him before your bubble bursts. And everything you've worked so hard for swiftly fades away.
1 Laurence Shames, The Hunger for More , Times Books, 1989.
2 Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life , Igantius Press, 1989, pg. 23.
"Pete Hammond is a PCUSA elder, a veteran InterVarsity staff member who directs the Marketplace® division, and is the creative developer, team leader and chief contributor to the new Word In Life Study Bible . He and his wife Shirley live in Madison, WI., and commute to Chicago regularly to see their grandchildren."
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