Life is More than Up and to the Right

some thoughts on measuring success

“Good, better, best—never let it rest ‘til your good is better and your better is best.”

This quote is attributed to Saint Jerome, and I have done zero research, but that seems a bit far fetched.

But this quote encapsulates a way of viewing the world that measures success through making things…well…bigger and better.

A world in which life is all about up and to the right.

“How is writing going?”

"I’ve published ten books!”

“How is church going?”

“Oh our attendance is trending upwards.”

“How is the economy doing?”

“Up and to the right!”

Yeah but some people who write a lot of books are crooks, liars, and a bit mean.

There are huge churches with super toxic leadership structures and teaching that undermines the idea that God is love.

Sometimes the economy is doing well because other people’s economies aren’t doing so well, or they may even be losing their lives because of endless wars that make the graphs go up and to the right.

When our charts go up and to the right because other people’s charts are trending downwards, we might need to consider whether we are playing a zero-sum game and if our gains are worth other’s losses (Philippians 2:3).

And all of this is another way of saying that efficiency and profit and growth and production are not solid indicators of health.

Just because you’re hustling, have a busy schedule, and your production is at an all time high doesn’t mean that you are healthy and thriving.

And as someone who values these sorts of things and judges himself based off of them, I have a hard time accepting what I’m writing here. I even told my spiritual director that one way he could know I’m doing well is if I’m posting consistently to Substack, which is another way of saying if my number of posts are going up and to the right, then you know I’m okay.

So let’s talk about walking, whether or not one dude on a chariot is worth it, and how cults always get back to you.

Jesus on Walking Away

In The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, he talks about a lot of these ideas. He kind of reminds me of Rob Bell in a way, but you could bring his name up in a life group at a community church without being judged.

One of my favorite things he does in the book is walk through Mark chapter 1.

The short version is that after a very long day of ministry filled with preaching and healing and calling disciples, Jesus doesn’t capitalize on the success. He doesn’t start a line of merch or have his followers build a multi-campus synagogue.

Instead, Mark tells us this:

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” Mark 1:35–38

To Jesus, the crowds weren’t a measure of success. While many preachers and teachers would love for “everyone” to be searching for them, Jesus isn’t about that. He goes to the wilderness to pray to prepare himself for the next day.

There’s a similar passage in John’s gospel where Jesus feeds thousands of people, but when he senses that they measure success through those sorts of metrics and begin to imagine what this would look like if Jesus became king of the world, Jesus walked away again…but this time on water.

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. John 6:15–19

As Jesus followers, how do we measure success? What narratives do we buy into? Is church attendance the only way to measure the health of a church? Or we may even question whether or not church attendance should even be taken into account when measuring the health of a congregation.

Could the crowd be large because they’re receiving physical healing or food and don’t actually care about the spiritual stuff? Could the crowd be large because nothing is ever said that could challenge them, make them feel discomfort, or potentially offend them?

Of course, the crowd could be large because people are hungry for truth and depth and meaning. The crowd could also be small because the preacher is a jerk. Just because you have small crowds doesn’t mean you’re walking “the narrow way;” it could be because people have good reasons to stay away.

Who’s to say?

But are we willing to let the crowds go, large or small? Are we willing to relinquish our ideas about what makes a church healthy and listen to the Spirit? Will we follow Jesus into the deserted place, into the mountains, or out onto the water during a storm, or is the way we measure success different from Jesus?

And all of this brings us to the next thing which relates to how we view efficiency, time management, and waste.

Is One Guy on a Chariot Reading a Scroll Actually Worth It?

“Am I worthy?”

I see and hear a lot of Christians talk about the idea of being worthy.

To be worthy means “having or showing the qualities or abilities that merit recognition in a specified way.” So in one sense, nobody is “worthy” of God’s grace and love. But when talking about being worthy, the definition of worth can slip into our minds.

Worth is defined as “the value of something measured by its qualities or by the esteem in which it is held.”

We can debate what it means for someone to be “worthy” of God’s love, but one thing that can’t be debated is your worth as a human being made in God’s image.

To God, you have infinite worth, and this intrinsic worth is far more important than questions of worthiness.

Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

Jesus doesn’t question the worth of the individual. Jesus even said that the value of a human soul far outweighs all the treasures of the world.

Never question your worth in God’s eyes. It is beyond belief.

This truth really shows up in a story in Acts 8.

Philip was on a roll. He was very well received in Samaria, and the crowds listened to him eagerly. He even converted a local sorcerer through the power of the Holy Spirit. But Philip didn’t stay in Samaria and plant a church where he would be the lead pastor and become more rich and famous than Simon the Sorcerer.

Instead, he was carried away by the Wind/ Breath/ Spirit of God.

Where would the Spirit carry him next? Could it be Rome or Ephesus or Corinth? After his effective preaching in Samaria, it has to be bigger and better—up and to the right!

Nope.

The Spirit took Phillip to a deserted place where he found one man reading a scroll on a chariot.

To our minds, this might not make any sense. We need to get this Philip guy into palaces and stadiums and amphitheaters. Imagine how much time is wasted by sending him to the middle of nowhere to talk to one guy!

But this isn’t how God measures success. Time isn’t wasted. Resources aren’t mismanaged. Philip wasn’t being inefficient.

Because one person is worth it.

This means you are worth it.

Yes, you.

If you take a mental health day, take a solo vacation, or need to be alone for a bit, you aren’t being selfish. You don’t always have to be “on” or hustling or whatever.

Caring for your own soul isn’t selfish. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself unless you love yourself.

You are worth more than all the riches, efficiency, and up-and-to-the-rights in the world.

Now, to state the obvious, sometimes we need a little up and to the right because we live in a world and operate within certain spheres that need that sort of thing.

We don’t want to measure church health by attendance, but if the attendance gets too low, then certain expenses have to be cut, right? But we can still work on how we frame things and desire a healthier way for everyone to view the world.

But what happens when systems that are supposed to up-and-to-the-right don’t up-and-to-the-right like we need them to.

Yes, this is as confusing to me as it is to you, and I’m laughing at myself typing out sentences like this.

Cults Always Get Back To You

I have a friend named Greg who is the absolute best. If you haven’t followed his Advent posts, you need to click this link and go up and to the right and hit subscribe. Then you should take a day off to wander into the woods, find a nice rock, and catch up on three years of beauty and grace.

The other day, Greg and I were talking about these two options he has before him, and he needs to make a decision soon, but he is torn on which decision to make. And there are all sorts of things that impact the decision like time and money and distance and familiarity and opportunities and qualifications, and it’s tough.

But then there’s this up and to the right thing.

One of the groups reached out to him, flooded him with information, and was super polished and professional. The other group took their time and didn’t have the same efficiency and fanfare.

And that can be a bit worrying, right? Especially if time and money and all those other things are involved. Because in this sort of playing field, those kinds of things matter.

As he told me this, I said, “Yeah, but cults always get back to you.”

And we had a good laugh.

But it’s true right? Sometimes our efficiency and productivity may because we simply have the time and the manpower and the energy to do that sort of thing. Other times it could be because we are desperate to get anyone interested in what we’re up to, like a cult.

So it’s definitely a measurement to take into consideration, but it’s also not the only measurement there is, right?

If you’ve ever gotten on a list of people who may be interested in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, then you know what I mean. I still occasionally get wedding invitations and Facebook requests.

But you also may be a nineteen-year-old guy who is trying to reconnect with a cute girl from church camp and gets nervous because she isn’t responding when really she’s sleeping in until almost 1pm.

It turns out that potential wives don’t have 24/7 hotlines for desperate college guys. I’m glad I hung in there and waited a few hours and resisted the urge to double text.

Isn’t it funny how our two-day-shipping, instant gratification, up and to the right world changes how we view everything?

We measure success in every part of life by standards that are often the opposite of life-giving. Our expectations of ourselves and others are influenced by ideas of efficiency and productivity and consumerism.

The same people that brought us single-use plastic packaging, unskippable ads on YouTube videos, and planned obsolescence brought us the feelings that if we aren’t always moving, always producing, and always plugged in then we aren’t worth anything.

But Jesus walked away. God thinks you’re worth it. And while cults always get back to you, sometimes the Dark Night of the Soul is a momentary silence that leads to deeper communion with God.

And we need wisdom and a lot of grace when thinking about, talking about, and applying these sorts of things in our up and to the right kind of world.