How would you respond if someone described you as ambitious? Is ambition positive? Negative? Neutral? Does it depend on context?

In this week’s reading, Paul cautions the Christian community against “selfish ambition.” He exhorts them to “look not to their own interests, but to the interests of others.” He goes to far as to say that Christians should “regard others as better than [themselves].”

The Christian theologian Miroslav Volf, in his book The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse, argues that “striving to be better than others devalues our achievements, surroundings, and relationships by turning them into mere means to an empty goal” (Volf teaches at Yale and he visited The Community Church two years ago as part of the Ohl Lecture Series. We discused his book Life Worth Living as part of our Community@Community Lenten program).

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Ambition: Virtue or Vice?

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