In his 2000 autobiography "The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography" screen legend Sidney Poitier reflects and explores the depth of character and personal values as a man, a husband, a father, and an actor. Mr. Poitier takes a punch at the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. How does one measure a man? Do you measure him by his earthly riches or by his heavenly treasures? Do you measure him by his victories or by his losses? Do you measure him by his successes and his accomplishments? Or do you measure him even by his failures? The measure of a man is really what is at the core of human value and validation. The scale that society often uses to measure men and women, especially the scale of success, would make most of us worthless or even failures in life. The truth is most people never make it to the top of the ladder in their career or profession. Most of us would never accomplish anything that no one has ever accomplished before. And most of us would never be considered to have even made any serious impact on society. There is truth in the following words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
The scale of success is a very faulty scale and cannot be a reliable measure of a man. Success is an abstract that is beyond definition in itself. Failure is concrete and more real and could turn out to be life’s greatest teacher. If that is so, then learning the lessons taught by failure is a sure route to success. And sometimes the way to winning is through losing. Some people that we consider successes are failures and others that we consider failures are successes. Working so hard at one thing could mean working less at another and being successful in one thing could mean being a failure at another. Sometimes the things we failed at are the most important things we really need to be successful in. I really wonder how many “successful people” would really be honest enough to acknowledge failure in other areas of their lives.
God sometimes rejects the people that we accept and accepts those that we reject [1 Samuel 16: 7]. And if we were to use the scale of success, we would have to consider many heroes of the Christian faith utter failures. We could then say that Moses failed on the Exodus mission since only two out of the millions that he led out of Egypt made it to the Promise Land. As some did, we also could say that Jesus failed since he had to be executed like a common criminal. We could also go a little step further and say that many martyred saints of the Christian faith from one generation to another failed because they chose dying over living. As the Hebrew writer puts it, “And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens.” [Hebrews 11: 32 – 34]. The true measure of a man is the same as the measure of a woman. It is in how well a man stands in his relationship with God and in how well he has served the purpose of God in his own generation [Acts 13: 36]. Therefore, a Christian’s worth is not in how the world measures him but in how God sees him.
K. George Olubodun
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