Why I hate success and love the Beatitudes

Success is the American virtue. Its pursuit is what drives just about every aspect of our society, whether it’s success in school, success in sports, success in dating, success on the career ladder, success in parenting, success in retiring comfortably. I would argue that the American worship of success is what causes American Christians to minimize the importance of Jesus’ most prominent body of teaching, the Sermon on the Mount which has a lot of problematic things to say to people whose number one priority is to be successful. The most problematic section of the Sermon on the Mount to the American ethos is probably the Beatitudes with which Jesus opens the sermon in Matthew 5. There are a wide range of interpretations for the Beatitudes, but one thing that cannot be said about them is that they celebrate success. And that is their most comforting aspect to me. Generally when people are accused of “hating success,” the assumption is that they’re envious of others’ success. The reason I hate success is because I’m a slave to it.