I once pastored a church with two doctors — an M.D. and a chiropractor.

One day, the M.D. shared an astute observation:

Dr. [Chiro, we’ll say] is a chiropractic doctor. I’m a medical doctor. Those in our respective fields tend to dismiss the other field’s practice. Do you know why?

When people have pain, they visit either their chiropractor or medical doctor. Their choice usually comes down to their own preference for care, often based on where they’ve found relief in the past.

If their first choice works, they go on with life. But if that option fails, they try the other.

That means I only see his failures. He only sees mine.

We only see each other’s failures, never their successes.

That’s why we tend to think the other is a fraud.

This phenomenon, which I’ll call “success blindness,” is a deadly corruption of God’s design for human flourishing.

God designed us to cooperate, not compete, in fulfilling his creation mandate. God designed us with weaknesses, including our inability to fulfill that mandate individually. It’s not just that we should cooperate, but we need to cooperate.

Unfortunately, sin corrupted our cooperation. Success blindness is an aspect of our moral weakness, through which we seek to rule each other rather than partnering for God’s glory and human flourishing. It permeates the world, church, workplace, and home.

In politics, it divides neighbors and preempts constructive dialogue and partnership. Candidates and constituents stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the opposition’s good ideas and accomplishments.

In the church, success blindness thwarts conversation and cooperation between gospel-believing, Bible-loving Christians. Calvinists vs. Arminians. Complementarians vs. egalitarians. Cessationists vs. continuationists. Paedobaptists vs. credobaptists. Normative principle vs. regulative principle. Elder rule vs. congregational. Megachurch vs. small church. Biblical counselors vs. integrationists. When we are blind to another’s success, in many of these scenarios, we see — and share — only the other position’s failures to convince others (and ourselves) that we’re right.

In the workplace, success blindness creates toxic competition between companies, employees, managers, and owners. We negatively mischaracterize others to secure promotions and contracts.

In the home, success blindness can become a tactic to manipulate and coerce spouses, children, and parents. Relentlessly highlighting failures and never success vindicates our bitterness, withheld affection, harsh words, and even abuse.

God hates success blindness. In the Law of Moses, he addresses and condemns it in several ways.

“Do not act unjustly when deciding a case.”
— Leviticus 19:15 

Success blindness is fundamentally unjust. Good observations, helpful practices, and skillful work merit recognition. Falsehood, malpractice, and shoddy labor deserve criticism. Both are true, and neither cancels the other, regardless of who my neighbor may be. To deny affirmation while seizing every opportunity to condemn is a form of false witness, a lie, an injustice.

“Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich; judge your neighbor fairly.”
— Leviticus 19:15

Success blindness is a form of partiality, the unfairness that the Law condemns. We see “the other side” as enemies in a zero-sum game with no place for them to be right about anything. We employ success blindness as a cheat code, exploiting and mistreating others for our benefit.

“Do not go about spreading slander among your people; do not jeopardize your neighbor’s life; I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:16 

Success blindness is a form of slander, defamation of character, a harmful and untrue representation. It murderously destroys a neighbor’s reputation, stirring up wrath toward them, and ultimately jeopardizing their livelihood. That is not the way of the Lord. “He judges the world with righteousness; he executes judgment on the nations with fairness” (Psalms 9:8). As his image bearers, our lives declare what he is like. Success blindness bears his name in vain.

“Do not harbor hatred against your brother. Rebuke your neighbor directly, and you will not incur guilt because of him. Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:17–18a

 Ultimately, success blindness is hatred—the opposite of love. We should benevolently offer direct and truthful rebukes when our neighbor is wrong. Success blindness—only rebuking and never affirming—is harboring hatred. Keeping a list of wrongs (and concealing rights) is vengeful, a wicked rationale for holding a grudge.

“But love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:18b 

Ultimately, success blindness is a failure to love. None of us wants to experience success blindness. We want our neighbors to view us accurately and charitably—offering gentle correction and grace when we fail and extending affirmation and gratitude when we succeed.

Love, we are told, offers no quarter to success blindness, according to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7,

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

 

No record of wrong. No joy in unrighteousness. Rejoicing in the truth. Believing and hoping all things — that is, love believes the best about others and hopes the best for them. 

While the Law could thoroughly condemn success blindness, it cannot cure it. The Law, Paul says, was “the ministry that brought death,” “the ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor 7, 9). The Old Covenant can only indict and damn us. Where, then, can we find hope?

There is good news — the Lord wraps reprimand in mercy, as I have discussed before here at Common Good. The New Covenant is a ministry of the life-giving Spirit, through which we see the glory of God in the face of Christ, by which we “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). Because we have this ministry of mercy, “We have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth” (2 Cor 4:2).

On the cross, the righteous, innocent, sinless, spotless Lamb of God was crucified by success blindness. The Father looked on his crucified Son and saw only (our) sin — “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21). He cursed his Son, pouring on him the fullness of his wrath that our sin merits.

Through Christ’s sacrifice, believers receive God’s gracious blind eye, not to our successes, but to our failures. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). When we trust in Christ, God says, “I will never again remember their sins and their lawless acts” (Heb 10:17). All God sees in us is the success of Jesus, whom he condemned, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

Secure in Christ, we don’t have to resort to such sight — to unjust, partial, unfair, slanderous, hateful, vengeful, grudge-bearing ways of viewing and characterizing our neighbors. The gospel resurrects us to a new way of being human: “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator” (Col 3:9-10). Christ has won; we don’t have to cheat. Christ will judge justly; we don’t have to bear false witness against our neighbor. Our success is found in Christ; we are free to love our neighbor — and even our opponents — as ourselves.