Graduations are joyful occasions. They are opportunities to celebrate academic achievement and success. Since we meet to celebrate such success in this unique institution, it seems fitting to reflect on the nature of success itself from a gospel perspective. I’ve called my brief remarks “On Sacrifice and Success: Lessons from Oliver Granger.” In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord promised Oliver Granger “that his name shall be had in sacred remembrance from generation to generation, forever and ever” (D&C 117:12). I would be pleased if these remarks helped fulfill this promise.
Oliver Granger was a businessman in the early Church. He was called on a mission in July 1838, soon after the Church leaders had fled Kirtland for Missouri leaving behind unsettled debts and much property, including the temple. In section 117, the Lord called Oliver Granger to return to Kirtland as “a merchant unto my name,” there to “contend earnestly for the redemption of the First Presidency of my Church,” adding, “when he falls he shall rise again, for his sacrifice shall be more sacred unto me than his increase, saith the Lord” (D&C 117:13–14). Note the Lord’s priorities: “His sacrifice shall be more sacred unto me than his increase.” There is a powerful gospel lesson here about the Lord’s “bottom line” both for his merchant and for us all.
We hear a lot these days about the “bottom line,” a useful if rather odious metaphor that calls to mind audits, balance sheets, tax forms, and other unpleasantness. The Lord gives Oliver Granger a lesson in Celestial Accounting 101 regarding the bottom line on heaven’s balance sheet. Heaven measures even its merchant missionary not by “his increase” (profit) but by “his sacrifice” (effort). The Lord evidently cares more about Oliver’s effort than his results, more about his input than output, more about how much he gives than how much he gains. I believe that these divine priorities hold true for all of us, and that understanding them is salutary because we are saturated by a culture of success that holds precisely opposite priorities.
A success culture necessarily concerns itself with outcomes rather than inputs—that is, with increase rather than sacrifice. The root meaning of “success” is “outcome” or “result.” Etymologically, “success” derives from the Latin succedere, meaning to follow; to come next, to take place of as a successor. In the earliest usage, “success” meant “that which happens in the sequel; . . . (favourable or otherwise) . . .&nsp;; the issue, upshot, result.” Because success originally designated any outcome, good or bad, it was common to wish a person “good success.” One hears echoes of this usage in “America the Beautiful”: “till all success be nobleness.” The implication is that some successes are not noble or good. And indeed, one could speak of “ill success.”
Eventually, “good success” became redundant as success came to signify “the prosperous achievement of something attempted; . . . with particular reference to the attainment of wealth or position.” By corollary, “successful,” when applied to persons (rather than experiments or projects), became synonymous with the achievement of wealth or position. Thus “success” came to designate a good in itself, one that required no specific reference to the nature of the results. What is forgotten when success is thus glorified in the abstract is that one can be a successful adulterer or assassin as well as a successful plumber or poet. Success is an empty signifier, like “excellence,” which means “the best.” Both “excellence” and “success” beg the question: the best what? Success with respect to what?
Since Joseph Smith’s day, the pursuit of success has become virtually a secular religion. It’s common, in fact, to speak of the “gospel of success.” This phrase recognizes that success can play a quasi-religious role as an ultimate value. I’ve wondered if success, when pursued for itself and with religious zeal, might be one of the idols against which the Lord warns the modern world in his preface to the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 1:16). Like any idol, success tempts us to pay obeisance to it with the best part of our lives. And few are strong enough to stop their ears against its seductive Siren song.
Evidence that success defines a core value in our day is everywhere apparent. Consider the fact that a Google search on “success” calls up 22.4 million hits, with thousands more being added each week. There’s “Dress for Success,” “Success.org,” “Success Homepage,” “Secrets of Success,” “Success Talk Channel,” and on and on. Nor is the culture of success an exclusively American or Western phenomenon. It’s a worldwide culture. Many entries are in Japanese and Chinese; many sites originate in the third world.
Now, this is not all bad. Surely a culture’s obsession with success is bound up with its dynamism and energy. Great ambition can spur great accomplishment. I recall that Abraham Lincoln’s law partner said that Lincoln’s ambition was a little engine that never rested. I’m not opposed to ambition, achievement, or success. Indeed, like most people, I enjoy prosperity and fame, probably more than I ought. And I certainly would prefer to succeed than to fail—though admittedly failure sometimes has been better for me than success. My concern today lies not with success per se but with the lust for success. Hence, I’m not concerned simply or mainly about the desire for wealth but about the desperate need to win. An English major can be as prone to worship success as an entrepreneur. Sorry Humanities graduates, your poverty provides no passport to virtue in this respect. In fact, academic culture may be more likely to fetishize ambition and success than corporate culture. And there is great spiritual danger in this. For success turns into a demon whenever it becomes our god.
So while I hope you succeed in your righteous desires, I also hope that you won’t measure yourselves exclusively by your successes and failures. God’s words to Oliver Granger remind us that we are more than our résumés, GPAs, salaries, scholarships, and so forth. What endears us to heaven is our sacrifice; our sincere efforts to love God and our neighbors are sacred. The Almighty does not require success, but he does require sacrifice.
This doctrine, which was revealed to Oliver Granger, is simultaneously comforting and frightening—and for precisely the same reason: The Lord mercifully accepts our sacrifice when we lay our all on the altar, but nothing less than our all is acceptable to God. For him, the widow’s mite means more than the millionaire’s munificence precisely because she gave of her all (Mark 12:44). So, too, your neighbor’s “B”—obtained at great sacrifice—may exceed the value of your “A” because sacrifice outweighs increase on the scales of heaven, which are the only scales that ultimately matter.
In the last part of this talk, let me illustrate the Oliver Granger lesson with a few other scriptural and literary texts.
So far as I know, no scripture specifies that we must be successful in the modern sense to inherit salvation. However, the scriptures repeatedly command us to sacrifice—to serve God with our heart, might, mind, and strength. Our fundamental religious duty is to strive, not to succeed—recognizing that the outcome is ultimately in God’s hands. As T. S. Eliot says, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
Consider Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: They knew that God had the power to save them from the fiery furnace. They also knew that the outcome was in his hands. Their concern therefore was for righteousness, not its results. Hence, they defied King Nebuchadnezzar with bold indifference to the consequences: “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. . . . But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image” (Dan. 3:17–18).
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were spared martyrdom. But spiritually they stand in the same position before God as Abinadi, who was not spared a martyr’s fiery death. From an eternal perspective, the outcome is irrelevant. What is sacred is the readiness not the result, the sacrifice not the success.
Consider, too, Paul’s teaching about missionary success. Paul provides a useful correction against an excessively result-oriented approach to missionary labor. Missionaries would do well to remember Paul’s statement to the Corinthians about the harvest of souls: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6; note the term “increase” again). Paul reminds us that, while the Lord calls us to labor with all our might in his vineyard, the increase (or converts) are the Lord’s “husbandry”: “We are labourers together with God: ye [the Corinthian converts] are God’s husbandry” (1 Cor. 3:9). This is the proper perspective on missionary success.
It’s the proper perspective on failure as well. When the Saints failed to establish Zion in Missouri, the Lord applied the Oliver Granger lesson to the entire Church. Said he to his persecuted people, “When I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons . . . go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence,” if they are then hindered from succeeding (as were the saints in Missouri), then “it behooveth me to require that work no more . . . but to accept of their offerings” (D&C 124:49). I call this “the doctrine of the acceptable sacrifice.” If we fail, having tried with all our might, the Lord takes the intent for the deed because, in the economy of heaven, sacrifice is more sacred than success.
The poet John Milton had to learn the Oliver Granger lesson as well. He records his divine tutorial in a poignant sonnet on his blindness. Having prepared all his life to write a great poem unto God, Milton was struck blind mid-career. It appeared to him that his blindness would prevent him from succeeding in the very vocation to which he felt Heaven had called him. This resulted in a deep spiritual crisis. Milton describes his struggle in a sonnet that works through these questions in terms of the parable of the talents, a story that could be construed to imply that all that matters to heaven is profit and increase. If God is a taskmaster who expects a return on his investment of talent, Milton reasons, then surely he, Milton, must be an unprofitable servant. For the talent that God gave him now lies “Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent / To serve therewith my Maker, and present / My true account, lest he returning chide.” It is a fearful prospect to be held accountable by a divine taskmaster whose bottom line is profit, increase. “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” cries the poet in anguish of soul. Then comes the Oliver Granger lesson, which reconfigures the whole question of what is profitable to God.
But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Like Oliver Granger, Milton learns that our profitability to heaven consists in the ancient sacrifice of a willing heart. The Lord does not need “man’s work”; he needs our will.
Milton inscribed this hard-won lesson into his epic account of the War in Heaven. In Paradise Lost, the good angels think that God needs them to win the war, that he needs their work. In fact, he needs them to fight. Or more correctly, they need the chance to fight in order to prove their valor. They win some battles and lose some, as do we all. But whether they or we win or lose does not ultimately matter. What matters is valor, not victory. Having fought valiantly, the good angels hear a voice from heaven accept their sacrifice and bid them now stand and wait:
Stand still in bright array ye Saints, here stand
Ye angels arm’d, this day from Battle rest;
Faithful has been your Warfare, and of God
Accepted, . . .
So, too, heaven bids us fight but not necessarily win—at least not in the short term. The ultimate victory is sure, for it lies in the hands of the Lord of Hosts. What is at stake is not the outcome of the war but our faithfulness in battle.
Now a word of caution, and then I’m done. You should not expect to find these Oliver Granger priorities operating in the world you are entering, any more than you found them here in the academy. The world will judge you mainly by outcomes, not by your effort, just as have your faculty. For unlike God, humans possess no window to the soul. We never fully know the “difficulty of the dive” for each other because we’re not privy to the obstacles each person must overcome, nor to each person’s unique portion of talents. In this fallen world, therefore, you must be prepared to be measured by your success because outcomes are often all that can be measured.
But do not measure yourselves by the world’s imperfect standard! Remember that he who looketh not on the countenance but on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7) sees beyond your résumés. He sees your souls. He knows your sacrifices, and they are sacred to him.
This is the lesson of Oliver Granger. May we hold his name in sacred remembrance from generation to generation by remembering that, unto the Lord, sacrifice is more sacred than success. In the name of the one whose sacred sacrifice makes possible salvation, the only success that ultimately matters, Amen.
