Why I'm not raising my children to be "successful."

A successful executive once stood in his mahogany-paneled office, gazing at the wall of achievements behind his desk—framed degrees from prestigious universities, industry awards, photographs with influential people. His children, now adults, rarely called. His marriage, though intact on paper, had become a polite arrangement between strangers sharing a mortgage. As he held his third glass of scotch that evening, a question haunted him: "Is this all there is?"

How many of us have been sold the same promise? Work hard, achieve success, build your legacy, and happiness will follow. Yet studies consistently show that beyond meeting basic needs, increased wealth correlates weakly with life satisfaction. The suicide rates among the affluent tell their own tragic story. We chase what glitters only to discover it was never gold.

As a father, I've wrestled with this tension daily. The world insists I should be grooming my children for Harvard, for corner offices, for stock portfolios that ensure they'll never want for anything. But what if the very premise is flawed? What if in preparing them to gain the whole world, I'm setting them up to lose their souls?

The Radical Reorientation of Purpose

My goal as a father isn't to raise children who are successful in this life, but to raise faithful men who will endure through this life into the next. This isn't mere pious sentiment—it's a fundamental reorientation of everything our culture holds sacred. The point of life isn't to be successful, or establish a legacy, or to accumulate the fanciest toys. Such measures of our lives do not even give what they promise, as the "successful" are often among the most depressed, the most unfulfilled people in the world.

Jesus himself posed the penetrating question: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36, ESV). The Greek word used here for "soul" is psychē—not merely the immaterial part of man, but his very life, his essential self. Christ isn't proposing a trade-off between material and spiritual goods; He's revealing that the pursuit of worldly success at the expense of one's relationship with God is ultimately self-destructive.

St. Augustine captured this truth in his famous prayer: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" (Confessions, 1.1). We were created with an infinite longing that no finite achievement can satisfy. Every earthly success whispers the promise of fulfillment but delivers only a more refined emptiness.

 

Love as the Architecture of Existence

God is man's origin and end. And God is love. This isn't sentiment but ontology—a statement about the very structure of reality. As the apostle John declares, "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Not that God possesses love as an attribute, but that His very being is love itself. If we are made in His image, then we are made for love, by love, and to love.

The meaning of life, then, is to participate in His love in such a way that we learn from sacrifice, from the gift-of-self for the sake of others (far from accumulating more for ourselves), what it means to love others in turn. This is the first and second of the greatest commandments: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39, ESV).

Notice the movement here—it's entirely outward. While the world teaches us to accumulate, to draw inward, to protect and preserve, the logic of love moves in the opposite direction. It pours out, it gives away, it empties itself. St. Paul tells us that Christ, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself" (Philippians 2:6-7, ESV). The Greek term kenosis—self-emptying—becomes the paradigm for authentic human existence.

 

Joy in Suffering

Here we encounter something that seems absurd to the modern mind: In Him I find more joy in my suffering than many of the wealthiest and powerful find in their success, riches, and achievements. This isn't masochism or denial. It's the discovery of a joy so profound that it transforms even suffering into a participation in love.

Christ loves me so much that He has permitted me the joy of suffering with Him. St. Paul understood this mysterious privilege: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body" (Colossians 1:24, ESV). Not that Christ's sacrifice was insufficient, but that He invites us to unite our sufferings with His, to participate in the redemption of the world.

That's the joy no one can take away. Jesus promised this explicitly: "So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you" (John 16:22, ESV). Worldly success can be lost in a market crash, reputation can be destroyed by scandal, health can fail, beauty fades—but the joy that comes from union with Christ in love remains inviolable.

St. John Chrysostom observed: "Not to enable us to live in luxury did Christ give us the present life, but to prepare us for the future one" (Homilies on Matthew, 50.4). Every moment becomes an opportunity for this preparation, every choice a chance to choose love over accumulation, service over success.

 

The Practice of Counter-Cultural Living

So how do we live this out? How do I raise children to embrace this radically different vision of human flourishing?

First, I must model it. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. This means making choices that seem foolish to the world—choosing presence over productivity, choosing service over advancement, choosing prayer over networking.

Second, I must help them taste true joy. Not the fleeting pleasure of a new purchase, but the deep satisfaction of serving others, the peace of prayer, the freedom of forgiveness. These moments must be celebrated more than any report card or trophy.

Third, I must teach them to read their restlessness correctly. When they feel that gnawing emptiness, I must help them recognize it as Augustine did—as the soul's hunger for God. Their dissatisfaction with earthly things is a compass pointing them home.

Fourth, I must prepare them for suffering. Not to seek it out, but to recognize it as inseparable from love in a fallen world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die" (The Cost of Discipleship, 89). This death to self is the doorway to resurrection life.

 

The Ultimate Measure

Imagine standing before God at the end of your life. Will He ask about your net worth? Your professional achievements? The prestigious schools your children attended? Or will He ask, as He asked Peter, "Do you love me?" (John 21:17).

The world offers us a thousand metrics for success, but Christ offers only one: love. Not love as feeling or sentiment, but love as self-gift, as sacrifice, as the choice to pour out rather than accumulate. This is the inheritance I want to leave my children: not a portfolio of assets but a legacy of love, not a formula for success but a pathway to sanctity. For in the end, the only tragedy is not to be a saint.

The executive in his office, dying of spiritual thirst, represents the logical endpoint of our culture's promises. But there is another way—the way of the Cross, which seems like foolishness to the world but is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). This is the inheritance I want to leave my children: a joy that no one can take away.