The Cost of Success

J.B. Phillips was a successful pastor and prolific author in the mid-twentieth century. He was a colleague and friend of C. S. Lewis’s, and it was Lewis who personally endorsed Phillips’s translation of the Bible into everyday language for modern readers. His books sold into the millions and are still popular today. Phillips’s legendary success established him as a leading voice in the work of the church all around the world.

But in Phillips’s autobiography, The Price of Success, he personally laments the great cost of his worldly success. He writes:

I was in a state of some excitement throughout 1955. My work was intrinsically exciting. My health was excellent; my future prospects were rosier than my wildest dreams could suggest; applause, honor and appreciation met me everywhere I went.

I was well aware of the dangers of sudden wealth and took some severe measures to make sure that, although comfortable, I should never be rich. I was not nearly so aware of the dangers of success. The subtle corrosion of character, the unconscious changing of values and the secret monstrous growth of a vastly inflated idea of myself seeped slowly into me.

Vaguely I was aware of this and, like some frightful parody of St. Augustine, I prayed, “Lord, make me humble, but not yet.” I can still savor the sweet and gorgeous taste of it all: the warm admiration, the sense of power, of overwhelming ability, of boundless energy and never-failing enthusiasm. It is very plain to me now why my one-man kingdom of power and glory had to stop.