Every year, Forbes puts out a series of lists of important people. There’s one for billionaires and one for the most powerful. Time Magazine has one for the most influential.
What’s especially interesting is that all of these people are leaders. Maybe not surprising. But interesting.
In the Kingdom of Men there’s an expectation that if you want true meaning and purpose, then you need rule others. You’ve got to have authority over other people. You need to do something big and visible and money making.
And if you make it to the top, if you finally succeed in walking up the stair steps of the Kingdom of Men1, then you finally will achieve a sense of meaning and purpose.
Which is fundamentally not true.
In the Kingdom of God, true meaning and purpose doesn’t come from ruling others, or even leading others. It comes from serving others.
Serving creates significance.
Which is completely upside down from how the world around us works.
One of my favorite comics is Frazz. The main character (Frazz) is a song writer who became financially independent thanks to some hit songs. But he decided to keep his day job as a custodian2 because he wanted to influence kids. What a fantastic picture of what true meaning and purpose looks like!
Also interesting: some of the wealthiest people in the world are now giving their fortunes away. It’s almost as if they ran into the brick wall of achievement and realized everything they’ve done – all of the leading and getting and power seeking – means nothing unless they are serving others.
And the best part about this realization is that anyone can serve. Anyone can have true meaning and purpose. Even if you don’t have any money, are completely disenfranchised, have zero power, are married, single, young, old, male, female, whatever. That’s the beauty of the Kingdom of God: this is for anyone who wants to embrace it, anyone who wants to enter into it.
Finding true meaning and purpose by serving flips the purpose of our careers as well. It means that our careers aren’t meant to be places where we seek to advance up the corporate chain for the sake of finding fulfillment. Our careers are meant to be places where we serve others. If advancement comes, that’s great. But it’s not the point. And if you are going to focus on advancing – on achieving, on ruling, on leading others – then the reason for doing that is so you can serve more people.[^3]
[^3]Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers handles this topic pretty well, even if it’s not strictly a Kingdom of God perspective.
Photo by William Krause on Unsplash