Do Evil People Really Get Ahead?
If doing good is its own reward, what is the reward for doing evil?
I used to have a boss. And this guy was an asshole.
He would yell at employees at the drop of a hat. He told lies about me to my CEO. If he thought someone had crossed him (and his definition of 'crossed' was very broad indeed) then he would drag their name through the mud for everyone to see. At a previous company, he told me once, he broke the law because he was (in his own words) greedy and pissed off at his boss. Within two years of him taking over, everyone who worked at my old firm, including people who had been loyal to the company for years, up and left.
Here's why I tell this story. In spite of his toxic behavior, this man's career is doing just fine. He's still upper management at the company. He owns several properties. By the standards of the world, he's winning.
I think a lot of us know people like this. Too often, the blessings of the world—money, fame, high status—seem to be showered on those who least deserve it. People get to the top, not through good deeds, but by climbing over others. Theft and dishonesty can make you rich. Many of our recent presidents are walking testaments to the fact that the highest blessings the world has to offer can be unlocked by corruption and skullduggery.
Theologian Neil Shenvi recently said that, as Christians, we should expect to lose some elections. Why? Because the behaviors that win elections—lying and cheating and stealing, falsely demonizing our opponents, playing to peoples' basest instincts instead of their highest natures—are beneath us. We are held to a higher standard of moral behavior; and in politics (as sometimes in business), a higher standard of moral behavior is a liability more often than it's an asset.
If you want to win in this world, one pretty effective strategy is to go low.
But what does this say about God, and about God's world?
I think we can look at this rather sorry state of affairs and come to one of two conclusions.
1) The world is fundamentally broken. Satan's in charge, and God's power over this world is marginal at best. As one song memorably put it, "It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot / It's called God don't answer prayers a lot."
2) There's something else going on.
What might that something else be?
Well, let me ask you this. Suppose I made you an offer.
What I'm offering: $1 billion. Per year. For the rest of your life.
The catch: starting now and for the remainder of your life, you will be *angry*. Every moment of every day you will be pissed off at someone. In every conversation you have, in everything you do, part of your brain will be distracted thinking about how so-and-so hurt you or what you should have said to them. This anger will eat you up inside.
Would you take the deal?
I wouldn't. Not in a million years.
Why not? Because the truth is that money, status, and fame don't actually matter. If you're unhappy on the inside, then all the money in the world is just more gilding on your cage.
I like how spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle describes it in The Power of Now.
"Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer."
I think the real currency of the world—the one that truly matters, that makes life worth living if you have it in abundance, and makes life feel like Hell on earth if you don't—is love and joy and peace. Love and joy and peace, not money or fame or status, is what's truly worth seeking.
I saw this in my old boss. He was financially successful, and he had power over lots of people. But a more miserable man I've rarely met. He complained constantly. He hated his job. He could bring the energy of a room down just by entering it. And, in all the time that I knew him, I never knew him to have a moment's peace. I never knew him to have a moment's deep and abiding joy, or to feel for one instant that awe-inspiring love and connection to God that we were made to feel. Instead, he was angry and hurt and scared all the time. In the currency that mattered, he was a beggar.
(I don't say this out of schadenfreude. The truth is that I think this man's life must have been very hard to make him this way, and I feel for him. I pray that God will wrap him in loving arms and nurture him and heal his pain.)
I think that hurting people hurt people. When we lash out at others, it is generally because the pain in our own hearts is boiling over. But it's deeper than that. The truth is that when we hurt others, we do even more damage to ourselves and our own souls. When we attack others without cause or justification, we cut ourselves off from their love. When we abuse them, we lie awake at night wrapped in chains of guilt and shame—chains that suffocate us no matter how hard we try to pretend that they don't exist. When we lie to get ahead, we live in terror of our lies being found out.
The more we step on other people, the more we might earn the currency of the world: fame and money and status. But these things don't really matter. They're just gilding on the cage. Meanwhile, our store of the only currency that really matters—peace and love and joy—slips faster and faster through our fingers.
I think this is part of what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote that "the wages of sin is death." It's not just that sin separates us from God or keeps us from eternal life. It's that the very act of sinning against our brother or sister makes us miserable deep in our souls. It leads, taken far enough, to the agony of spiritual death; to the utter absence of the love and peace and joy that make this life worth living. In the absence of those things, all that's left is pain and toil.
By contrast, living a life of virtue and goodness and kindness might not earn the blessings of the world. It might not make us wealthy or powerful. But this kind of life brings the currency that really matters in abundance.
Or as John Milton put it in Paradise Lost, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
So let us not be too jealous of those who have hurt us and have gotten ahead by doing so. Let us not let their external success make us bitter or blind us to God's goodness. I think they have already received their reward.
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