Somewhere in the life of every young person, the question surfaces. It may arrive through observation, through comparison, through the quiet awareness that some families seem to have more and others less. It may come in a conversation overheard or a card that declines at the till or a friend’s holiday pictures that glow with a wealth that feels unreachable. However it arrives, the question is the same: What does success look like? And the answer a young person constructs in that moment, often without realising they are constructing anything at all, will shape the trajectory of their life in ways they cannot yet imagine.
The world offers a clear and confident answer. Success is financial security. Success is achievement. Success is the ability to swipe a card without worry, to live in a house that impresses, to accumulate experiences worth telling others about. It is the Ironman completed, the promotion earned, the portfolio growing. The world’s definition is not entirely wrong. Scripture does not condemn wealth, and Proverbs affirms that the hand of the diligent makes rich. There is nothing inherently sinful about financial comfort or personal achievement. The danger is not in having these things but in making them the measure of a life well lived.
Jesus asked a question that cuts through every culture’s assumptions about success: What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? The question assumes that it is possible, perhaps even common, to pursue success so single-mindedly that something essential is lost in the process. The rich fool in Luke’s parable was not condemned for dishonesty or laziness. He appears to have been a hardworking man who earned his wealth honestly. His foolishness was that he lived as if there were no God, hoarding grain and goods, planning for years of ease, without recognising that his life was not his own. God called him a fool not because he was wealthy but because his wealth was the whole of his ambition. He had stored up things for himself but was not rich toward God.
Ecclesiastes explores this terrain with devastating honesty. Solomon, who had everything the world considers success, wealth beyond measure, wisdom unmatched, pleasures without limit, concluded that all of it was hebel, a Hebrew word meaning vapour, breath, mist. Not that the things themselves were worthless, but that apart from God they evaporated. They could not sustain meaning. They could not answer the deepest questions of the heart. The man who had tried everything declared that the end of the matter was to fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of humanity. Everything else, no matter how impressive, was chasing after wind.
The modern world has intensified this chase. Achievement culture has embedded itself so deeply in Western life that children absorb its values before they can articulate them. Research suggests that perfectionism affects roughly a quarter of children and adolescents, driven by a society that increasingly equates worth with performance. Jennifer Breheny Wallace, surveying thousands of parents, found that at the root of the relentless drive to achieve is an unmet need to matter, a longing to be valued for who one is rather than for what one produces. Children raised in high-achieving environments often report that they feel they have no value outside their accomplishments. The irony is that the pursuit of success, intended to provide security and significance, produces anxiety, depression, and a gnawing sense that nothing is ever enough.
This is not merely a psychological observation. It is a spiritual one. Timothy Keller described the human heart as an idol factory, constantly taking good things and making them into ultimate things. Career, wealth, even family can become the centre of a life because they promise significance, security, and fulfilment. But they cannot deliver what they promise. The person who builds their identity on professional success will find that their confidence collapses the moment the career stalls. The person who builds their identity on financial comfort will find that no amount of money quiets the fear of losing it. These are not gods. They are counterfeits, and counterfeits always disappoint.
What, then, does success look like in the eyes of God? Micah answered with three requirements: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. The three are inseparable. Justice without mercy produces self-righteous zealotry. Mercy without justice produces sentimental indulgence. Either without humility produces someone who serves others in order to feel superior. Genuine success, biblical success, begins with the humble recognition that life is a gift, that every capacity is given, that every achievement belongs ultimately to the one who provided the strength, the mind, and the opportunity to achieve it.
This reframes the meaning of achievement entirely. An accomplishment that serves only the self, that exists only to be told to others, that glorifies the achiever rather than the God who made it possible, is not what Scripture celebrates. The swimmer who completes a race for the forty-seventh time and tells the world about it has done something impressive. The swimmer who completes the same race and directs the attention toward a cause, toward the needs of others, toward something larger than personal glory, has done something meaningful. There is a difference. God does not forbid enjoyment. There is no rule that says we must not take pleasure in our gifts or our pursuits. But there is a persistent biblical insistence that our gifts are not our own. They are entrusted, and the question at the end of all things will not be how much did you accumulate but what did you do with what you were given.
This has particular relevance for young people who are only beginning to form their understanding of what matters. A teenager who watches a parent struggle financially may conclude that the solution is to pursue money above all else. But if that teenager does not have all the pieces of the puzzle, if they do not understand the decisions and sacrifices that led to the present situation, their conclusion may be built on incomplete evidence. A parent who chose to be present during a child’s formative years, who prioritised conversation and development and engagement over career advancement, has made a trade that the child may not recognise for decades. The social competence, the emotional depth, the ability to think and communicate clearly, these did not appear from nowhere. They were cultivated by a parent who was there. Research confirms what experience suggests: the more time parents spend with their children, the higher those children score on measures of wellbeing. The presence of a parent during formative years shapes cognitive development, social skill, and emotional resilience in ways that money cannot replicate.
None of this means that financial responsibility is unimportant. Agur’s prayer in Proverbs captures the tension perfectly: Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you, or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour your God. Both scarcity and abundance carry dangers. The prayer is for sufficiency, for enough, for the freedom to live without the slavery of either want or excess. This is balance. Not the balance of a self-help book, but the balance of a life ordered toward God, where work is honoured as service and rest is honoured as trust.
Paul wrote to the Colossians that whatever they did, they should work at it with all their heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. The Greek phrase ek psyches, from the soul, suggests that all work, whether visible or hidden, whether paid handsomely or barely at all, has dignity when offered to God. Luther recovered this insight at the Reformation, insisting that the farmer shovelling manure and the maid milking her cow pleased God as much as the minister preaching. Dorothy Sayers echoed it centuries later: the only Christian work is good work well done, and the church has lost its hold on reality wherever it fails to understand this. Success, in this light, is not a destination measured by bank balances or public recognition. It is a posture of faithfulness, a daily offering of whatever we have been given, done as well as we can do it, for the glory of the one who gave it.
Young people deserve to hear this. Not as a prohibition against ambition, but as a reframing of what ambition is for. The pursuit of money is not evil. The pursuit of excellence is not wrong. But if these pursuits crowd out relationship with God, if they leave no room for the people we love, if they reduce the meaning of our lives to a portfolio of accomplishments we can list for others, then we have gained something and lost something far greater. The richest life is not the one with the most in the account. It is the one that can look back and say: I was present. I was faithful. I used what I was given not only for myself but for others. And in all of it, I walked humbly with my God.
Success is not a number. It is a life that makes sense when viewed from eternity.