The Worship of Success

I've almost finished the 2010 biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. According to the author, Bonhoeffer was fascinated by the way people worship success. He experienced firsthand the fickleness of the crowds at bullfights when he was in Spain; one minute roaring for the toreador, the next, for the bull. In 1938, just after the infamous Kristallnacht, Bonhoeffer, disheartened by the inability of the Church to be bold and firm in the face of oppostion and suffering, wrote in an Advent letter:

 '...God's cause is not always the successful one...we really could be "unsuccessful"and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm." Pg. 318.

Metaxas writes:

After the fall of France, many understood that Hitler was destroying Germany through success.

Hitler himself saw his success as 'Providential.' Bonhoeffer had a different view:

Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939.

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done...
With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means...
The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.
Bonhoeffer, pg 363

Calvary by Jan Bruegel, c.1610

It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God.
C.S. Lewis