Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The form of the Crucified invalidates all thinking oriented toward success, for it is a denial of judgment. Neither the triumph of the successful nor the bitter hatred that those who have failed harbor against the successful will ever really get the better of the world. Jesus is certainly no advocate of the successful in history, but neither does he lead the rebellion of failed existences against the successful. He is concerned not with success or failure, but with his willing acceptance of God's judgment. . . . In the cross of Christ, God shows the successful person the consecration of pain, of lowliness, of failure, of poverty, of loneliness, of despair. Not because all this might possess some inherent worth, but because it receives its sanctification through God's love, which takes all this upon itself as judgment. God's yes to the cross is judgment upon the successful. The unsuccessful, however, must realize that it is not their lack of success, not their status as pariahs as such, but alone the acceptance of the judgment of divine love that allows them to stand before God.

[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]