ambition: how a vice became a virtue
Have you noticed how things that used to be considered vices are now regarded by many as virtues — and vice versa? The meaning of words changes over time. A century or two ago, a woman could be called “handsome,” but a suitor would be ill-advised to do so today. Sometime around my high school years, the expression “bad” — used in the appropriate context — came to mean “good”; “wicked,” in its most common use, now means “great.” “Sick” means “wonderful.” But these are merely colloquial expressions. It all depends on the context.
But then there are transformations not just in vocabulary but in values. “Restless” used to mean shifty, unreliable, even unstable. Today, however, to be restless is to be alive, always on the move, suspicious of authority, and discontent with standing still. Our idea of “ambition” has gone through a similar transformation.
The title of this chapter assumes that ambition itself is a vice: something wrong and sinful. For most people today, that is counterintuitive. But not that long ago it used to be a compliment to tell a person that he or she lacked ambition; today it is taken as a criticism. Ambition a vice? How can that be?
Of course, if by ambition we mean simply a drive or initiative in setting and reaching goals, there is nothing more natural to us as God’s image-bearers. God created us in righteousness and holiness, to extend his reign to the ends of the earth. Glorifying and enjoying God was the object and goal that greeted Adam and Eve each morning, as they loved and served each other with energetic satisfaction. However, instead of leading his wife and his entire posterity in this “thanksgiving parade,” Adam declared independence from his King. The immediate effects of his ambition were rivalry and self-assertion — first between Adam and Eve, and then between Cain and Abel. The rest, as they say, is history.
So too, however, is God’s solution. In the fullness of time, the Father sent his Son. Where the first Adam sought to break free of his created rank and ascend to the throne of God, the last Adam — who is God in his very nature — left his throne and descended to our misery. “He . . . emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Phil 2:6 – 10). While the first Adam launched a “meet you at the top” philosophy of life, Jesus Christ says to the world, “I’ll meet you at the bottom.”
Our passion for life and achievement and our desire to strive toward a daring goal are essentially hardwired into us by God. What has changed since the fall is the direction of this drive. Unhinged from its proper object — God’s glory and our neighbor’s good — our love becomes self-focused; our holy passions become vicious, driving us away from God’s approaching steps and away from each other. We’re not living in the real world, the creation that God called into being and sustains by the word of his power, but in a make-believe world. We are living as though God and our neighbors were made for us. In other words, we are living unnatural lives — living as if we were or could become someone other than the image of God, created to love God and each other.
That is why the drive for achievement is no longer a virtue, why our pursuit of meaning and significance is so confusing and futile. This isn’t new, as we learn from Ecclesiastes. From the first day of our fall into sin, the world that we imagine to exist and the selves that we presume to craft show themselves as empty shadows. Yet we keep the charade going because the reality is too great to bear, namely, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and can only be justified by God “as a [free] gift” (Rom 3:23 – 24). This fallen condition expresses itself in idolatry and sexual immorality, where we even extinguish the light of nature.
Yet at its heart sin is the eclipse of thankfulness toward God (Rom 1:21). Why thankfulness? Because rather than seeing ourselves as self-creators who choose our own identity and purpose, the biblical worldview tells us that we are on the receiving end of our existence. We are beholden to someone else. Our life is a gift from God, not our own achievement. And our ingratitude is the clearest expression that we have idolized ourselves.
Ambition in Scripture
The Greek philosophers warned against ambition (eritheia). It did not mean drive or initiative. It meant putting oneself forward, as in an election, but in a spirit of rivalry that is not beneath resorting to unscrupulous tactics. A related term migrated into the world of medicine with erythema, “redness,” which referred to the inflammation of the skin, like psoriasis. More generally, it could be used to refer to any disorder in the body — one’s own body or the body politic.
But the Greeks did not see anything positive in its alternative. In fact, they regarded humility as the pose of a slave. Cultivating humility was not something they encouraged as a virtue for the nobler classes. This is why the incarnation of the Son of God in history constituted what one writer calls “a complete moral revolution.” Our positive evaluation of humility is due entirely to the dawn of the new age in Christ.47 A key passage for this is Philippians 2, where “self-sufficiency” founders. Where sinful humanity ascends to heaven in ambition, God himself descends in humility for us and for our salvation.
The apostle James reasons:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (Jas 3:13 – 18)
The Greek word translated “selfish ambition” in this passage is eritheia. In older English versions it is just “ambition.” A modifier would have been considered redundant, like talking about “cold ice.” Ambition was selfish by definition. The fact that our modern translations feel obliged to add “selfish” points out the change in our culture’s evaluation of this attribute. Hence, James’ observation: “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” Ambition leads to disorder in the body.
Appealing to Christ’s example of loving service to us, Paul exhorts the Philippians to humility and concord. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3 – 4).
Further, the terms “selfish ambition or conceit” in this passage are also translated from eritheia (“ambition”) along with kenodoxia (“empty praise”; i.e., pretentiousness). Its next of kin are philodoxia, “love of praise,” and philautia, “self-love.” Paul is clearly telling his readers that the opposite of being of “one mind” is selfish ambition. Everyone has to be his own star in the show, breaking away from the consensus, blazing his own path. Not simply the celebrity leaders, but their adoring fans, are to be diagnosed with this cancer. “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:2 – 4). Obviously, the warning includes people in the church: “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (3:5).
For Paul, “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy” rank alongside drunken orgies and idolatry as “the works of the flesh” (Gal 5:19 – 21). The contrasting fruit of the Spirit include “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” “And those who belong to Christ Jesus,” he adds, “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:22 – 26).
The only instance in the English Bible where the notion of ambition is used positively is in Romans 15:20: “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel.” But even here, the word Paul reaches for, philotimoumenon, simply means “strong desire.” As he said at the beginning of the letter, he is “eager [prothymon] to preach the gospel” (Rom 1:15). In one other instance, Paul uses the verb in encouraging brotherly love “and to aspire [philotimeisthai] to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thess 4:11 – 12). It is no small irony that Paul encourages an aspiration — even ambition — to mind our own business and fulfill our ordinary callings.
Especially in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, Paul draws on a familiar analogy to describe the church as a system of interrelated and interdependent parts with Christ as the head. In this body, each member plays an important role, regardless of the degree of honor or prestige. An arthritic joint in one finger causes the whole body to suffer. The hand doesn’t exist for itself, but for the body. Every member has something that the whole body needs. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). After listing some of these gifts, the apostle reasons:
If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. . . . If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? . . . But as it is, God has arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. . . .
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, ”I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty. (1 Cor 12:15 – 23)
Paul then makes the point: “that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Cor 12:25 – 26).
This isn’t every person for himself, but all for one and one for all: Christ for us and then us for each other. It may not make any sense to people around us, but when a brother or sister falls down, we do not keep running, much less demean them, but turn back to pick the person up. If necessary, we carry him or her to the finish line. In the old age that is passing away, under the reign of sin and death, I didn’t shoulder other people or let them carry me. In the dawn of the age to come, however, I am free to bear their burdens and to allow them to bear mine (Gal 6:2). As my generation used to sing, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” “Above all,” Peter exhorts, “keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8). Peter isn’t saying that our loving acts atone for sin. Far from it! Peter’s astonishing point is that love hides the faults of others rather than making a spectacle of them.
Christians should be some of the most conflicted people in the world. It is far simpler to be dead to God and to live for oneself. But Christians must struggle against their selfish ambition because they are alive to God in Christ Jesus, and the indwelling Spirit turns on the lights to enable them to see their sin. The old Adam in us thinks we’re crazy. Thinking more highly of others than you do of yourself is not the way the world works. Follow that logic and you’ll be left in the dust, he counsels. Love is fine in the abstract, but how can you love someone without doing some sort of cost-benefit analysis? There is a calculus here: you have to balance community and autonomy. But both of these ideals are motivated by the selfish horizon of this present age.
Contra the wisdom of this age, Paul tells us that the body of Christ is not just a voluntary association for realizing my dream of “belonging” or a place where I can assert my unique qualities. Christ’s body is not a stage for my performance, but an organism into which I’ve been inserted by the Spirit, by a miracle of grace.
Envy fuels a restless discontent. Selfish ambition and lazy self-loathing differ only in the way they act on this envy. One must aspire aggressively to something more than his or her ordinary place and gifting — or acquiesce in resentful passivity toward the rest of the body. A “toe” aspiring to a “higher” status, like a hand — or even the head — abandons the calling for which God prepared and gifted it. Discontent, perhaps even envious and resentful, refuses to take its assigned place where its function is crucial for the whole body.
If we stick closely to the biblical terms for it, ambition is folly, for we will take God’s gift of godly aspiration and fashion them into weapons of self-interest. “Ultimately, it’s we ourselves who hold ambition hostage,” notes Dave Harvey, “and we’ll drop godly drives if something more attractive shows up — and in the process, the right kind of dreams die.”48 Ambition is an empty pursuit, because none of us is truly the master of our fate and the captain of our soul. We cannot live up to our own Facebook profile or the expectations that have been placed on us by others. When we do try to disengage ourselves from the ties that bind, the whole body suffers. As we have seen above, especially from Paul’s exhortations, ambition is bound up with rivalry, factions, jealousy, envy, and even fits of rage. When we are ambitious, each of us campaigns for the office of emperor. In the process, we’re tearing Christ’s body, our homes, our workplaces, and our society to pieces.
Melted Wings and How a Vice Became a Virtue
Just a couple of decades before Christ’s birth, the Roman poet Ovid popularized the tragic tale of Icarus. After falling out of favor with his ruler, King Midos, the master architect and craftsman Daedalus found himself imprisoned in a labyrinth that he had constructed for the king’s enemies. His son, Icarus, was condemned to share his fate. One day, Daedalus made wings from feathers and wax and the father and son took flight. Soaring over the islands and fishing boats, they reveled not only in their liberation but in the freedom of the skies. Yet Icarus wanted something more: to ascend to the sun itself. Ovid related the lad’s mournful demise:
By this time Icarus began to feel the joy
Of beating wings in air and steered his course
Beyond his father’s lead: all the wide sky
Was there to tempt him as he steered toward heaven.
Meanwhile the heat of sun struck at his back
And where his wings were joined, sweet-smelling fluid
Ran hot that once was wax. His naked arms
Whirled into wind; his lips, still calling out
His father’s name, were gulfed in the dark sea.
And the unlucky man, no longer father,
Cried, “Icarus, where are you, Icarus,
Where are you hiding, Icarus, from me?”
Then as he called again, his eyes discovered
The boy’s torn wings washed on the climbing waves.
He damned his art, his wretched cleverness,
Rescued the body and placed it in a tomb,
And where it lies the land’s called Icarus.49
In a recent study, William Casey King traces the transformation of “ambition” from vice to virtue.50 Since antiquity, ambition was associated with pride, and Christian thinkers underscored its destructive power. Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, called ambition a “hidden plague.”51 Augustine warned of the libido dominandi — the craving to dominate, that is, a corruption of the good stewardship that God entrusted to humanity. Thomas Aquinas identified ambition unequivocally as a sin.
The Protestant Reformers concurred. In fact, ambition was a frequent target in their writings and sermons. They discerned it in the papacy, in the radical sects that sought to turn everything upside down, in the rising merchant class, and among the rising nation builders. They also lamented its rapacious entrance into their own circles.
In his “Anatomy of the World” (1611), poet and preacher John Donne pointed to the clouds on the horizon: “And new philosophy calls all in doubt.”
’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation;
Prince, Subject, Father, Son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a Phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.52
Returning to King’s survey, we discover the many references to ambition in the notes of the Geneva Bible, which shaped the literary imagination of Shakespeare, Milton, and Marlowe. One might also add that Milton and Marlowe also invoked the tale of Icarus. The ambitious villain is Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Milton’s Lucifer, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.
Shakespeare offers his own definition of Hamlet’s ambition: “dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. . . . I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.”53 Yet we feel ourselves closer to Nietzsche’s interpretation, which he felt sure Shakespeare himself must have intended:
He who is really possessed by raging ambition beholds this its image [Macbeth] with joy; and if the hero perishes by his passion this precisely is the sharpest spice in the hot draught of this joy. Can the poet have felt otherwise? How royally, and not at all like a rogue, does [t]his ambitious man pursue his course from the moment of his great crime!54
Nietzsche’s fanciful redescription is a fatal marker of the cultural turning point in our evaluation of this vice.
Drawing on passages like Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, Reformed preachers taught that limitations are healthy — both for us and for others. They encouraged excellence and opened new doors of literacy and learning that were previously unavailable to many, including women. There were new opportunities for improving one’s lot in life. Yet they discouraged “wandering stars,” as Calvin often referred to the restless souls who were never content with their calling and circumstances in life.
In his providence, God has given to each of us specific gifts, inclinations, talents, and opportunities. We are not unlimited. Our future is not “whatever we want it to be,” and we are not able to become “whatever we wish.” Yet all of this is for our good — and the good of others. The gifts and opportunities we have been given are to be used not merely for private advancement, but for the public good. And this is why we all need each other. In society, every sort of calling is needed for the commonwealth. So too in the church, even a little finger cannot be hurt without the whole body aching. The priesthood of all believers did not mean that every believer held a special office in the church. There is still a proper order for the complete harmony and growth of the body.
Wherever this type of piety spread, there was a sense that the diversity of stations in life was something to celebrate rather than eliminate. Most of the verses in the children’s hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” magnify God’s glory in creating so much diversity in colors, plants, climate, terrain, and geography. Then there is verse 3:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.55
It is worth noting that this verse has been eliminated from many modern hymnals as contrary to the egalitarian spirit. But what about “the poor man at his gate”? Are we basically telling such brothers and sisters that their life is an embarrassment? That they have failed to make something of themselves? Are we implying that they are victims of oppression when it may be just as plausible that they are living happy and healthy lives, participating more deeply in the exchange of gifts in their own circle? And do we assume that one’s social status is determinative for his or her place in the body of Christ? That their gifts and callings are not good enough to supply what the rest of us lack?
We’re called to be children, students, and friends; then also to be spouses and parents, employers and employees, neighbors and citizens. We are also called to be members of a local expression of Christ’s body. All of these callings keep us within bounds, to be sure. Who can deny that being married and having children is being “tied down”?
We all want to live for ourselves and yet be cared for, to have authority without responsibility, to be beneficiaries of the gift exchange without being benefactors. There’s nothing new there. What is somewhat new is that this consummate hubris is seen increasingly not as an evil to be repented of, but a basic human right.
People who are perfectly content — truly happy — being janitors or gardeners are encouraged to become dissatisfied and restless. They should aim for the stars. Everyone should strive to work his or her way from the mail room to the boardroom. Even to question that, and to value neighbors simply for who they are in the civil body as well as the body of Christ, is considered condescending. Actually, though, isn’t it less condescending to recognize the value of each person and his or her role in society and in Christ’s body?
Democracy has opened the door to new opportunities, but it has also created a new kind of elitism, one that is based not on inherited position but on what people have “made of themselves.” In some ways this is even more condescending than the aristocratic feudalism that at least had a sense of noblesse oblige — that is, the obligation of the higher for the lower as well as the lower for the higher. Like a fever that drives one mad, ambition causes one to take himself or herself out of the circulation of this gift-giving.
What’s striking in the literature from Reformed and Puritan pens are the numerous warnings directed to rulers and aspiring rulers, including the new class of upwardly mobile business people and politicians. Kings heard sermons reminding them that they were given their calling by God’s providence for the common good, not for private enrichment or power, and that he pulled the mighty down as well as raised them up.
With Francis Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth century, ambition came to be seen, not as another sin to confess, but as inevitable human lust to be channeled into socially constructive ways. Ambition was still seen as a vice, but as more of an illness than a sin. What do you do in that case? You inject antibodies to fight a bacterial infection, fighting fire with fire. Writing during the London plague, Bacon had a ready analogy: sometimes poisons, taken in the proper measure, are the only antidote.56 As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”57
Doubtless, explorers and colonizers were driven by nobler motives as well, but it was becoming clear that ambition could be domesticated. Many came to believe that it could be harnessed “for God and country,” while not failing to bring wealth and fame to those swift and sure of foot.
Today, the habits of explorers, conquerors, and experimenters have become the values of the common person. Everyone is meant to break away from the herd and to become a phoenix rising from the ashes. The spirit of ambition is expressed in the rousing sentiment of General George S. Patton: “I do not fear failure. I only fear the ‘slowing up’ of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, ‘Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?’ ” Perhaps it is most obvious in the entertainment industry, with TV programs like The Apprentice, Project Runway, Master Chef, and Survivor. The most obvious lesson is to do anything you need to in order to get ahead.
The aspiration to achieve has made America the land of opportunity. Yet it also comes at a price. Today, personal achievement is valued as an end in itself. The character it forms assumes that possibilities are endless, resources infinite; that limitations on personal choice are intrinsically evil, that everyone should go to college and become a successful businessperson, engineer, lawyer, doctor, or other professional. Where it becomes normal, success thus defined becomes expected. Converted from vice to virtue, ambition was spurred by the trophy awarded to the high achievers. But now every kid receives a trophy just for showing up. We’re all extraordinary now. Every American is entitled to the best of everything. Ironically, the democratizing of ambition is undermining genuine distinction and excellence. For those who fall short of the glory of the American dream, the fate can be as tragic as it was for Icarus.
Ambition is a focal point for something that creates within us — especially in our younger years — a tension between self and community. “Ambition drives people forward; relationships and community, by imposing limits, hold people back,” writes Emily Esfahani Smith. “Which is more important?” Her article in The Atlantic argues that “relationships are more important than ambition: there’s more to life than leaving home.”58
It is not surprising that Friedrich Nietzsche, the modern propagandist for the will to power, considered Christianity the great inhibitor of noble ambition. Nietzsche believed that the cross is a symbol of an entire religion’s devotion to mediocrity, justifying a passive acquiescence to power and the herd instinct. “This God has degenerated into a staff for the weak, the god of the poor, the sinners, the sick par excellence.” The poor German became “a ‘sinner,’ stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts . . . fully of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a ‘Christian.’ ”59 “A god who died for our sins; redemption through faith; resurrection after death — all these are counterfeits of true Christianity for which that disastrous wrong-headed fellow Paul must be held responsible.”60
Never known for nuance on such subjects, Nietzsche was reacting against the suffocating moralism of bourgeois liberal pietism. He failed to recognize the life-affirming and world-embracing message of biblical Christianity. He missed the point that Christ’s death was not a symbol of anything, but an unrepeatable rescue operation in history. He seems not to have understood that Jesus never acquiesced to power. Ironically, as his disciples argued over rank in the kingdom (Luke 22:24 – 30) and Jesus nipped Peter’s ambition in the bud by foretelling his betrayal (22:31 – 34), Jesus — who actually possessed all power — told them that he was actively embracing his impending death: “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’ ” (22:37; cf. Mark 10:45; John 15:12 – 13). Even then, “they said, ‘Look, Lord, here are two swords.’ And he said to them, ‘It is enough’ ” (22:38).
Earlier, Jesus had told a crowd that he will lay down his life. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” Yet even he does so not as Nietzsche’s “Superman,” but says, “This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17 – 18). “Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Pilate asked Jesus at his trial. “Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above” (19:10 – 11).
Yet Jesus does this out of submission to his Father and his love for us. Here is one man — the only man in history — who could truly have had the world at his feet. He could have turned Pilate and his court to ash by a mere word. Not for a moment was he a powerless victim. On the contrary, with Christ a new power — a power of forgiveness, love, and mercy — entered this world filled with aspiring gods who live disillusioned and vacuous lives. By enduring the cross, he was raised victorious, leading liberated captives in his train as he ascended to the throne of all power in heaven and on earth.
Furthermore, we are crucified with Christ only to be raised with him in newness of life. The cross didn’t have the last word over Jesus, and therefore it doesn’t over us.
For Nietzsche, as for many in the West today, power is synonymous with ambition. Those who embrace this simplistic choice are to be pitied. They know nothing of the power of love, forgiveness, care, and sacrifice. Therefore, even after misunderstandings are corrected, the basic thrust of Nietzsche’s hostile reaction remains valid to anyone for whom the idol of ambition remains well-polished in the temple.
Death and Resurrection, Not a Makeover
It seems obvious enough that selfish ambition at the least entertains bad company in the Bible. It is the spirit that corrupted Lucifer, the erstwhile angel of light in God’s royal court; it is the venom that filled Adam’s heart with swollen pride, and the vain conceit that erected the Tower of Babel. Selfish ambition is the self-love that seeks to ascend beyond the skies in a solo flight, away from God and the community of fellow creatures.
As far as Scripture is concerned, passionate drives can be godly or ungodly, but ambition cannot be channeled into good directions or harnessed for noble ends. It is the heart of the sinful self who must die and be raised with a new identity, a new name, a new hope, and a new way of existing — not in oneself, but “in Christ.”
It is not simply that a Judeo-Christian culture has been warped by worldly values. After all, what does one expect from the world — even in a more church-friendly version of it? The real tragedy is that in some ways churches have themselves helped to facilitate these transformations, however unintentionally. The ambition of explorers and imperial churches of yesteryear could be cloaked in pious rhetoric — “for the glory of God and the extension of his kingdom.”
Ambition — even in the older sense, as the desire to rise above all others — can be harnessed for the call to be a spiritual superhero. We see this tendency today in the way we hold up “celebrities who know the Lord” as icons. What would it say to our youth group if, instead of inviting the former NFL star, we had a couple visit who had been married for forty-five years to talk honestly about the ups and downs of growing together in Christ? What if we held up those “ordinary” examples of humble and faithful service over the worldly success stories?
The challenge here is that we have been trained to read even the Bible as a catalog of heroes to emulate. Moses is the great model of leadership, Joshua is the ideal warrior, and we should “dare to be a Daniel,” as the old hymn exhorts. This is a little odd, when you actually read the narratives and discover that Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and all the rest were ordinary sinners like the rest of us who had received an extraordinary calling. They fell short of that calling, but God was faithful. And they too needed a Savior — and this is the central plot unfolding in Scripture. In our ambition, we trip over the central character and the central meaning of the whole story.
A. W. Tozer put his finger on this problem:
The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, “Come and assert yourself for Christ.” To the egotist it says, “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrill-seeker it says, “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.61
Ambition is ambition, no matter what package it comes in. There are actually leaders today who identify themselves as apostles, founders, or otherwise pioneers extraordinaire of the church. While they dismiss the checks and balances of older and wiser forms of church government, they end up claiming the throne for themselves.
Familiar terminology may still be used, but its meaning has changed because its entire frame of reference has become secularized. Where the biblical message calls us to the cross, to die to self and to be raised in Christ, the new message calls the old Adam to an improved self, empowered to fulfill more easily his own life project. The new evangelism negotiates a contract with the sinner rather than announcing God’s judgment on the sinner and the good news of a covenant of grace. Thus, the church becomes another service provider governed by the autonomous choices of consumers, simply perpetuating the illusion of self-sovereignty that leads to death.
The point of this brief survey is to remind ourselves that our habits are not simply shaped by our beliefs; our beliefs are also shaped by what we — not merely as individuals, but as a society evolving over generations — have come to accept and desire as good, true, and beautiful.62 Ultimately, we have to decide which story we truly believe.
Even good things can be corrupted when we become curved in on ourselves. And that’s why we must die. In the true version of the story, the gospel, we learn that we all die in order to be raised as a living member of the new creation: justified, adopted, raised with Christ, and “seated . . . with him in the heavenly places” (Eph 2:6 – 7). We forget that we can’t be happy by looking for happiness; we can’t be successful by aiming at success; we can’t be passionate by trying to be more passionate. We need someone other than ourselves to love, desire, and trust. We can’t invent or reinvent ourselves. We do not choose our own nature from a supermarket of unlimited options. That is a fable we keep telling ourselves as we fly with waxen wings toward the sun.
Exercise
1. How does Scripture define and evaluate ambition? Identify some key character traits that cluster around this vice?
2. How has the myth of Icarus played out in history, and how have Christians responded to it in previous generations?
3. Is ambition something that we can harness for positive ends? What is meant by the point that what we need is death, not a makeover?