RECIPE FOR SUCCESS: A JUXTAPOSTION OF GOD AND WORK
This book is not for everybody. The ideas expressed in this book is inappropriate for young minds below the age of sixteen (mentally). If you are uncomfortable with new ideas, you probably won't enjoy this book. If you would be offended by an untraditional view of God or if you are dogmatic or a fanatic, then you probably shouldn't read this book. The ideas expressed in this book are not by any standard, stamped as truth; they are just another random view of just another random human being. I am however open to intelligent comments and responses whether supportive or otherwise.
INTRODUCTION
When you ask people how they believe success can be achieved, they most probably would answer from either of two school of thoughts and in recent times, even more popular is a third view, which is a combination of the first two. This book tries to juxtapose these two seemingly parallel lanes which people believe and follow as the recognized path to a guaranteed success. While some claim to hold fast to both, they do so in the wrong manner; well at least in the opinion of the writer. But then like I said, this book is not a recognized standard; so there, they might be right after all!
Well then, if you are ready, then let's dive in and explore that secret recipe which guarantees success!
Chapter 1: MAN'S CRAVE FOR SUCCESS
What exactly is success?
Success has become a keen subject of interest in the globe today that so many hold different stands as it relates to its standard definition. However, one thing we can agree on for sure is that it is something that any right thinking human desires. Although some say that there are different kinds of success: There is the good success, the bad success and probably even the ugly success. These classifications are however, completely subjective; whichever you desire, however you choose to define yours, I'm sure you can agree with me that all types of success are but instances of "The achievement of one's aim or goal".
But then, is there a constant formula to achieve this common craving of man? Again the answer is completely subjective. If you are a religious person, your answer would most probably have been, "Seek God and he shall grant you all the success you desire" or "Allah is the giver of all success" or something similar. However if you are an atheist, a realist or some other related non theistic personality, your answer most probably would have been "Hard work is the key to all success". A third perspective commonly held by theists with a revolutionized mind is that " When you believe in God, you only need to work a little and he blesses your little work and grants you success proportional to hundred times your input".
We'll analyze the various school of thoughts and ascertain if any of them could really fit into the definition of a formula( which should be constant in its ability to generate the same result when applied again and again). To guide our discussion, we'll work with a real life analogy. Now here's the analogy.
Our story comprises of four students who were all in the same class, preparing for an examination. They all wanted success which in this case implies they all wanted an A. They employed different strategies in a bid to achieve that success, however they had different experiences with regards to success.
Case 1:
Student A was a Christian who unfortunately, took ill 2weeks before the examination and consequently could not prepare adequately for the examination. He went into the examination hall and as expected he wrote poorly. But then, after the exam, he prayed, fasted, believed and had faith in God. The result came out and he had an A. He went to the church the next Sunday and gave a testimony of how God gave him his success.
Case 2:
Student B was also a Christian like Student A and he fell into the same predicament as the former. He too did exactly as Studen tA did; He prayed, fasted, believed and had faith in God. However in his case, he had an F. For the purpose of this analogy, we will assume that Student B is a complete replica of Student A in terms of situation and actions taken. Only the outcome was different.
Case 3:
Student C was another student in that same class, this time with a different approach to success. He was of the school of thought that "Hard work alone could guarantee success". He went to class regularly, did all his assignments and every other thing that was required of him as a student. He prepared thoroughly for the examination with all seriousness and hard work. The exams came and he wrote excellently as expected. The result came out and he had an A. When asked how he achieved such feat, he chuckled and said, “Hard work is the key to success".
Case 4:
Our last student, Student D like you might have rightly guessed, did everything exactly like Student C did; however, the exams came and he blanked out in the examination hall.
Consequently, he had an F.
For the purpose of simplification, we would assume that Student C and Student D are both atheists so that we emphasize the fact that they both strictly depend on hard work, with no regard for God.
If at some point when you read through the 4 cases, you had any iota of doubt as to the possibility of such happening, or a feeling that one of those cases is practically impossible, then it goes to say that you haven't got enough experience in life or you have no idea of the intricacies of the world we live in or you probably might just be one of those biased and naive beings who cannot accept reality which stares at them in the face. If you fall into any of these categories of doubters, then you are strictly advised to stop reading this, as the rest of this book is built on the foundation that the stories in the analogy are in fact real life situations. Now let's head on to the analysis.
Chapter 2: SCRUTINY OF THE GOD FORMULA
From the analogy, Student A clearly did not apply the hard work formula. By that I simply mean that he didn't do enough as required for that particular situation- In this case, read for his examination; Rather he applied the God formula- which in this case means he prayed and had faith in God, and he got his success.
Student B did not also apply the hard work formula, rather he applied the God formula. But unlike Student A, he failed.
Point is, Student A and Student B applied the same formula( God formula), but got different results; Implying that this method is not constant in its ability to generate the same result when applied again and again. If you are a religious person with this school of thought, then you must have a lot of thoughts racing through your mind right now to explain why Student B failed. Let's look at some of those points that come to mind.
*Student B must have missed something. He probably didn't pray right!
*Student B had a wrong mindset/approach.
*Student B's grace wasn't the same as that of Student A.
*God chose to favor Student A and not Student B for reasons best known to him; After all, the holy book says "I (God) will show mercy on whom I will show mercy on- Romans 9:15.
If your thoughts were pointing in the direction that Student B did something different from Student A, then I wish to remind you of the assumption we made about Student B. His situation was exactly the same with Student A and he did everything exactly the same way as the former
If your thoughts were geared in the direction that Student A had a different level of grace or that
God chose to favor Student A for reasons best known to him, then you have just implied that God is partial! Two students who served God in the same way fell into the same predicament and prayed the same way. But God chose to favor one and not the other, and then you explain to the neglected fellow that, " See bros, your grace wasn't enough". There's no other valid explanation to describe such action other than partiality and injustice!
As a religious person, your sentiments would probably prevent you from accepting such assertion readily, so let me try painting the picture in a different sense; one not involving God. Imagine that your mother asked you and your sibling to wash some of her clothes, and then you both did so equally (that is, you shared the clothes and each washed the same number of clothes). Now imagine that she came back and starts praising only your sibling; even goes ahead to reward him/her with some good cash and she doesn't say a word to you, not even thank you. What would be your reaction or your state of mind at that particular point in time?
If you are honest with yourself right now, then you would agree with me that your reaction would have been, "Mommy, it’s not fair! How would you reward Mary alone?! Both of us did the same thing! What about me?†Now imagine your cousin patting your back saying, Mommy knows why she didn't reward you; she knows the best for you. Now tell me what your reply would be to that cousin of yours. Of course you won't subscribe to that statement. You will argue sternly that there was no reasonable reason for your mom to reward only your sibling!
It’s the same with our initial story of Student A and Student B. They both did the same thing, but God decided to reward one and leave the other. I hear someone grunting within himself saying that God really does know what is best for us and he'll give us just that; After all His ways aren't ours.
So tell me, why pray? Why ask from God?? Why fast??? Why request at all from Him if He is going to give you what He chooses to anyways? If you say God knows what is best for you and he'll give you just that, then tell me, why ask anything of him? Your choice doesn't matter anyway.
Student A and Student B wrote exams and prayed to God but God gave them his choice anyways, irrespective of their prayers. What then was the significance of their prayers? As a believer, before you travel, you pray for safe journey mercies; Why? Why pray if God is going to still do as He pleases anyway, of which an accident might be the case! Someone would probably object and quote this Bible verse: " For I know the plans that I have for you, said the LORD, plans of good, and not of evil, to give you an expected end- Jeremiah 29:11". And my reply to that is that, if God's plan for his children are of good, then why did Student B fail? Student B was God's child, he should have had an A! Surely we can agree that an F doesn't seem so good a plan nor is a fatal accident going to give one an expected end. If you are going to get God's predetermined choice for you anyways, then it goes to say that your prayers do not actually affect your end result. If you happened to get what you prayed for, it only goes to say that your prayer was just lucky to be in sync with God's plan for you at that particular point in time. Your prayer was not actually the cause of your success; it was just coincidence! If prayers affect God's choice, then Student B should have gotten an A too. If you say that Student A's prayer affected God's choice, then Student B's prayer should have done likewise! Otherwise, God is partial even to His own children.
My point is that the God formula (which is synonymous to prayer, believing, faith and trust in God) is not a constant formula for success. Not everyone who prays gets success. Not everyone who believes gets success. Not everyone who trusts and has faith in God gets success.
But then again, you might have some important points you would want to put forth to explain why this thing works for some. You might have some intelligent argument you may want to layout to explain why some people are on the good side of God's decision or where some people miss it. However, no matter how you modify your school of thought to support the God formula, one thing is that is certain is that if everybody decides to stick to it strictly, it still won't work for everybody! It still won't give everybody that expected success. Student B might get an A when he applies it, but then Student C might not get the A when he applies it. It will work for some; for others it simply won't; implying that it is not constant in its ability to generate the same result when applied again and again. Therefore it cannot be regarded as a constant formula for success!
Chapter 3: SCRUTINY OF THE WORK FORMULA
Work! Or should I say hard work? Is there any difference between them? Surely there is a clear etymologic distinction between them; but in this book, both terms will used interchangeably as hard work proves a better term to emphasize that the level of effort put in is not just any substandard work input highly disproportional to success.
Hard work! Can we really say that this is the constant formula for success? This is going to prove a harder nut to crack than expected, owing to the fact that the people with this school of thought are either people who disregard theism or have a conception that God plays no distinct role in deciding the success of a man; more like, "he has left us to carve our own future with our own works" and usually, the people with this school of thought are those with great minds.
To a large extent hard work has really excelled in its ability to give success. But then, can we really ascribe to it the attribute of being a constant formula? Let us head back to our analogy.
Student C applied the work formula and not the God formula and he had success. Student D likewise applied the work formula and not the God formula, but he failed. People with this school of thought would probably have a ton of ideas running through their minds now to defend the authority of their formula.
One might say, “It is impossible! You can't put in so much effort as that described of Student D and then fail."
Allow me to remind you that there have been cases where people blanked out in the examination hall (Even the brightest students in the class face this nightmare at one point in time or the other). Same way, it is very possible in all facets of life involving a work input.
You might say, “Well, it seldom happens. This could just be one of those exceptions bro."
Fair enough. It means you are on the path to accepting that hard work does not guarantee success all the time.
I sense that feeling of disagreement in you, so I will try and repaint the picture from a different perspective that might very well express my standpoint on the unreliability of hard work.
Even if you know nothing about football, you must have heard at one point or the other, the arguments about Messi and Christiano Ronaldo. Both of them are great players, but Ronaldo puts in more work than his rival. And in the opinion of many, he still doesn't equal Messi who on the other hand does very little in terms of work (training). I know so many people will take me up on that conclusion so I admit that this might not be the best example to highlight. My point however is that there are so many players out there who work much more than Messi (In terms of training), but they don't have success like him!
Now you probably might be thinking, "Common! We all know that Messi is naturally talented in football. You can't compare other players with him."
Then it means you are gradually getting the point. Hard work couldn't fetch those players the desired success, the same way hard work couldn't fetch Student D success!
There might be some controversies about the amount of work each individual has to put in to get the same success. But my little inference from that, is that if a person does little or nothing to achieve success (like Messi), then his formula isn't hard work!
Let's take a look at our analogy once more. Student C and Student D put in the same effort but only Student C gets success and attributes it to hard work. Now tell me, what do we term the effort of Student D? If the supposed hard work of Student C earned Student D an F then what do we now say of Student D's effort? Was he not hardworking? If we say that hard work gave Student C his success, it goes to say that the same hard work gave Student D his failure.
That was quite a lot to take in! Take a deep breath and read through again. To fully grasp it, you have to allow every word sink in.
You still didn't get it? Here's another analogy. Imagine that you had a very close friend. Let us assume that you both always read together all the time for the same number of hours. And in the scale of work (assuming such exists), you both were hardworking. Now imagine that the result came out; you had an F while your friend had an A. What do we now term your effort? Still hard work?
If you say yes, it then certifies that hard work is not a guarantee for success.
If you say no, then tell me what you think your effort should be called. Play work? Or soft work?
Confused? Let me help you out. A good answer would be, "Hard work is relative". But then another question pops up: On what standard do we base our judgement of what is hard work? What is the SI unit of hard work? How does Student C ascertain that he has actually done hard work? How does Student D ascertain that he hasn't done enough work to be termed hard work? Which of the two Students, if any, could be said to have done hard work?
My point is that if you achieve success, you cannot emphatically attribute it to your hard work since someone out there puts in the same hard work and still fails. It implies that the work formula is not constant in its ability to generate the same result when applied again and again. Therefore it cannot be regarded as a constant formula for success!
Chapter 4: GOD PLUS WORK- THE WRONG WAY
The third perspective and probably the common among religious people is that, "As a believer, you don't need to work as much as an unbeliever does in order to get that same success". They'll tell you however, “You’ve got to work bro! God doesn't bless empty hands". They go further to explain that with zero work input, God cannot and will not bless you with success. They believe that once you are one of them (that is, a believer), then you just opened a secret pathway to unmerited success. Christians probably might quote this verse for you, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all other things shall be added unto you- Matthew 6:33". Therefore when an unbeliever puts in 10,000 Joules of work to achieve a goal, you as a believer only need to put in 100 Joules to achieve that same result. They'll tell you, “It’s the grace we enjoy bro; that’s what you gain when you believe in our God". Then they'll probably go ahead and cite some really compelling testimonies of great men who believed in their God and were successful. Other times, they might highlight instances where they themselves were also beneficiaries of that stream of unmerited favor (grace).
Hmm... Quite a tantalizing offer right? All you just got to do is stick with them, believe in their God and do all that their holy book commands and then you get all you ever desired!
The terms and conditions don't seem too burdensome to fulfil right? I mean, compared to the fat goody bag reward attached to it. It’s no wonder there are many who are religious on the world today. Everybody wants a good deal.
However, there is a problem. There are just too many companies offering the same package with just little modification to their brand! Each religion claim to offer success when you believe in their God. Each of them claim their God is the true giver of success and that all others are fake. They present the same goody bag to you with just slight changes to the terms and conditions. The funniest and probably the most intelligent concept common amongst all of them is the strategy with which they keep their customers and draw others: THREATS!
Hold up now...let's not jump too far.
Back to the point: Each religion claims their God is the giver of success and that he favors those who believe in Him and do His will.
A fact about these religious organizations that no one can deny is that they all have evidence! They all have instances of unnatural miraculous success stories. The only problem though, is that these miraculous success stories are not particular to any one religion. Any religion you pick, there have been miraculous success stories. Even among atheists and non-theistic denominations, there have been miraculous success stories!
While the theist would attribute such unmerited favor to his God, an atheist might attribute his to luck; But they experience this unnatural favor all the same.
By miraculous success stories, I mean success which is highly unproportioned to the work put in. An example would be Student A! Student A got success that clearly he didn't work for. That's a miraculous success story!
While this book presents Student A as a religious person who prayed to God, the undeniable truth is that such unmerited situation could as well happen to anybody; be it Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or even Atheist. However when they experience such, they all attribute the cause to different sources as they wish to believe.
So tell me believer, who is responsible for the unnatural success of others not in your fold? If God blesses only those that believe in Him superlatively, who is responsible for the badass success of others?
I hear thoughts roaring in your mind. Take a deep breath; its simple logic! If you say that as a believer, you only need to do little work in order to achieve the same level of success as the unbeliever; how do you now explain yourself when it happens the other way around?
It is either of two options:
1) The supposed unmerited favor(grace) that your God promises is not specific to just you lot in that fold rather it transcends all of mankind. This goes to say that the school of thought that believers have to do less work to achieve the same success as an unbeliever, is FALSE.
2) Your God does not actually do the magic; There is a rather indifferent authority or system which decides on who succeeds or not; irrespective of one's religion or ethical beliefs.
Still not convinced? Let's assume for a moment that the saying, "As a believer, you only need to do little work in order to achieve the same level of success as an unbeliever" was true. It should mean that in every sector of life, believers would only have to do very little in order to equal the success of other. Meaning that if they decide to put in as much as average level of work (assuming work was quantifiable in that sense), then they would by far surpass every other person. Now imagine that the believer puts in the same effort as the unbeliever, then it goes to say that they would by far surpass the unbelievers in the same manner that Usain Bolt would outrun a twelve year old boy. Wow! If that saying was actually true, then we would only have believers of a particular religion dominating in every sector of life. In fact, the first one million richest and most successful people in the world today would be believers of a particular religion!
Whoa...hold up... But is that the case in the world today? The answer is an obvious NO; Meaning that the saying, "As a believer, you only need to do little work in order to achieve the same level of success as an unbeliever" is FALSE.
In fact, the logic is further flawed when you now imagine that everybody on the planet now becomes a believer of a particular religion. Then who are they going to be doing less work with respect to?
Having highlighted all of these, I dare to say that instances of unnatural success, whoever it may happen to, is not the doing of the deity of one particular religion. If at all it is, the privilege is not restricted to its believers. So if you are a Christian in Brazil and you wrote an exam that you deserved to fail but then you got an A+, you can't say Jesus did it for you because you are his faithful and loyal child; because a Muslim in Ghana also experienced the same situation and his Prophet is Mohammed. If your religion is Hinduism and you went for a job interview of which you were the least qualified candidate, but you got the job all the same. That wasn't Krishna who got your back because you served him because the same thing happened to an Atheist in Australia who wakes up every morning cursing Krishna!
Chapter 5: MEET NATURE: THE NEW GOD
I think it has finally reached the stage where we should unveil the much awaited secret recipe to success right?
I'm sorry I am going to have to disappoint you, there is no secret recipe for constant success!
What?! So you lied all along??!! This book was a scam???!!!
Hey...Before you decide to close this book and probably burn it, hear me out. Although there isn't one particular formula which guarantees success every single time, there is a system/authority which determines the success of a particular input, based on certain predefined rules. I cannot give you a formula which you can apply and obtain constant success from the reward system, even Napoleon Hill could only try, however I can make you understand the way the system works so you can channel your input in a direction as to get maximal output.
I'm pleased to announce to you that the authority which determines whether a certain input is successful or not, is GOD.
"Are you for real...So you think I'm here to play right...wasn't condemning the God formula the first thing you did? If you have nothing useful to write about, please just call this off!†Those must be the thoughts going through your mind now but hold up. Let's go slowly.
We are often too quick to limit the meaning of God in relation to theism and religion. Quite frankly, from time immemorial, God as a term has become affiliated with religious deities and concepts related to theism. However I would love to tilt your glimpse a bit. Think of God as a term used to describe any concept, force or being that commands unnatural authority over certain issues, circumstances, actions or situations that are generally above normal human capabilities. "Messi is a God on the field" doesn't necessarily mean he has some religion attributed to his worship as a deity. It simply means he commands unnatural authority whenever on the football pitch.
Having said this, allow me introduce you to Nature. She will be taking the place of conventional God definition. I'll tell you why nature has to take the place of God in this matter as we proceed.
However, let me introduce you to yet another important concept which would pave the way for our analysis: Probability.
Probability is the likelihood of an event happening. Math students can relate more to the complexity of this concept and how exhaustively broad a topic it is.
Probability holds the answer to the question of any and every event. The answer to the toss of a coin is probability. The answer to the question of if you would live to see tomorrow is probability. The answer to whether or not you succeed is probability! Yes, probability. The calculation and derivation may vary considering external factors however it holds whatsoever answer you search for.
Let us head back to our initial illustration of the four students. How and why did student A succeed over student B even with the same input...Probability!
Whenever an input (in form of work) is put into any event, the cosmic authority- Nature rolls a dice with the given input and the result is delivered by probability. But how does probability determine the answer?
If you were attentive in your math classes, then you should already know this but if not, let's do a quick recap. Let us illustrate the working principle of probability with an example. If in a basket containing 50 balls, 20 of them are blue and 30 are red, what is the probability that if I pick a ball at random, it would be blue? The obvious answer to this question is 2/5. That is, the chance of getting a blue ball is 2 out of 5.
Do you already get where I'm headed? Probability makes use of the inputs given and delivers a result! Let's modify the illustration a bit. If in that basket of balls, 45 of them were blue and the remaining 5 were red, what now is the probability of drawing a blue? You got that right 45/50 which is 9 out of 10.
Now let's modify it a little bit more: if all the balls were blue, what is the probability of getting a blue ball? 1! That is, you are sure to draw a blue ball at any time!
If you observe carefully, you'll find that probability makes use of the inputs fed to it in order to produce a result. The more the number of blue balls given, the more likely a blue ball would be the end result. The lesser the number of blue balls, the lesser the likelihood of drawing a blue ball.
Take note, however that even if the number of blue balls in the basket were 49, there is still that possibility of getting a red ball! The chances are quite slim but still it is very very possible!
Pause...
Could we relate this simple mathematical concept to the concept of success with respect to work?
The more work you put in, the higher your chances of getting success! Sort of like, success is the blue ball and failure is the red ball. The more work input you put in, the more reds you convert to blue. Initially, about 99% of the balls in the basket of probability is RED. But as you put in more work, you gradually convert reds to blue and at some point you may actually convert about 99% to BLUE. And in this case, when nature puts its hand of decision into the basket of probability, you are most likely to get blue (success).
This is a very simple basic illustration to get my point through to you. While in real life, outcomes do not only comprise of success or failure as it stands. There are in-betweens in real life situations. Just like results do not only comprise of A or F, there are grades between. These other in-between situations can be likened to other colors between blue and red which may be contained also in the basket. So as you do more work, depending on your input, some reds may be converted to blue or purple or violet(which may be likened to B or C) or any other color, as the case may be; But certainly to a higher grade. And when nature picks one, you might end up with purple (which might be represented by B). I do not have a definite premise on how exactly nature and probability does this conversion and the parameters involved, however one thing is sure: As you do more work, your failure balls are proportionally being converted success balls.
Notice my use of 99 %( and not 100%) above. The reason for this is "nothing is 100% guaranteed". I mean to say that no matter the amount of work input you put in, there is still that 1% content of red balls and it may turn out to be the chosen ball!
Also, even if you put in no work input, there still is that 1% content of blue balls and who knows, you might just be lucky. While in fact this is very rare and most unlikely, it is very possible and has been seen happen in so many situations. Typical examples are Student D and Student A respectively.
OK... But why did we have to substitute nature for God? Couldn't we just say God does the picking?
Simple! The concept of God in the perspective of religion portrays him as a supernatural being that has a bias for his followers (believers). God, in the view of every religion depicts him as a Father who would naturally favor his children (the believers) more; hence, the endless prayers from his followers to remind him of their supposed divine relationship in order to convince him to bless them more. This school of thought of father-children favoritism is what they also employ as a tool to persuading others to join their fold. They say, “When you serve our God, he would bless you unnaturally above others." Christians might quote, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you" or "My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus." or "We shall always be the head and not the tail". This and many other similar favoritism based scriptures they cite to assure themselves that they have an edge over others.
This should therefore mean that believers of a particular religion should have more successes than others. It should therefore imply that believers of a particular religion should have more luck than others, so to say.
But this is not the case! In fact, from the Bible scripture, "we shall always be the head and not the tail", Christians should always be at the top of everything. We all know this isn't true; therefore that passage and many others which delude Christians with false hope of favoritism from the cosmic authority, is a fallacy.
Now to answer the question of why we substituted conventional God for nature, I would simply say, conventional God definition is biased and assumed to be in affiliation with a particular set of people. However, our definition of God (nature) is an indifferent entity. Nature does not favor you because you are a Christian or an Atheist. Nature does not intentionally/consciously pick a blue ball in the midst of red balls just because you belong to a particular religion or race, she picks the ball blindfolded. Nature does not give you any preference based on what you believe. If you are a Christian and you got something you didn't work for or you probably survived an accident in which every other participant died, that wasn't your biased religious God saving you for being his follower, that was a rare probability situation in which nature picked a blue ball in the midst of outnumbering red balls. It was luck! It could have and has happened to anyone irrespective of their beliefs. Besides, other times you do get the bad egg amongst the outnumbering good eggs.
However, there's one exception to this rule! The pretty smart thinkers would have figured a loophole in the indifferent status of nature.
Some people seem to always be on the good side of nature! Take Messi for instance, even when he doesn't work as much as others he still outshines them by default. Usain Bolt probably doesn't train as much as some other athletes, but still nature always seems to pick the blue ball for him. I probably don't read as much as others, but I tend to always have a better result than them. Why? Is nature truly indifferent and blindfolded in her selection of the deciding ball? Or does nature favor a particular set of people after all?