Our world and ourselves are being broken by selfish ambition. While I could easily point to examples of people around me, I’ll be the first to admit that my own life and relationships have been amply broken by it, too: It was the cause of many of my worst decisions, the moments I regret the most.
When I was young, I thought I’d grasped the purpose of life. I measured myelf by my achievements. In class, sports, and popularity, I defined myself by the positions I had and the prestige I possessed. I was living a life in pursuit of selfish ambition.
It wasn’t until I became a Christian that the light of Christ set me free from this empty pursuit.
We’re obsessed with self-satisfaction, yet we’re profoundly dissatisfied. The endless stream of advertisements, purchases, news and digital chatter leaves us alone, listless and craving something more. The Christian faith contains a very precise diagnosis as well as a distinctive and irreplaceable cure.
Importantly, our ambition itself is not the problem. Ambition is a constructive force. Our failure to correctly direct and educate ambition is the problem.
The Bible shows us quite clearly how selfish ambition looks and how it ends.
“From the least to the greatest, their lives are ruled by greed,” the prophet Jeremiah observes in Jeremiah 6 (NLT). “From prophets to priests, they are all frauds. They offer superficial treatments for my people’s mortal wound. They give assurances of peace when there is no peace.”
Jeremiah was addressing a people misled profoundly by selfish ambition. They were searching for answers in places they’d never get them, consumed by selfishness that led nowhere.
Saul’s story is also an excellent depiction of selfish ambition. It would seem he began humbly — even hiding when they sought to make him king — but this “humility” was insecurity and fear, which drove him to defensive selfishness. He was lost to it, over time.
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it is familiar. We’re all familiar with sin and selfishness. We’re all familiar with its tragic end.
Paul contended with it often and directly in the early church. In one letter to the Corinthians, he warned them they were going astray in this way and might not like what he had to say in Jesus’ name:
“For I fear that perhaps when I come I will not find you to be what I want, and you may not find me to be what you want. Perhaps there will be quarreling, jealousy, angry outbursts, selfish ambitions, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.”
Selfish ambition has always been with us. It always will be. It’s one of the greatest and most persistent spiritual foes each of us will battle in our own lives.
What might seem a little less familiar to most — but is vastly more important — is spiritual ambition.
Jesus was the most ambitious person to ever walk the earth. His ambition was spiritual in the sense I’m using now: He sought to save the entire world.
James 3 teaches us that selfish ambition produces spiritual disorder and social decay, but spiritual ambition rooted in God’s love creates peace, humility, and healing.
Jesus sought to save the world not through self-glory, but for the sake of God’s glory. He even embraced His own weakness and trusted Himself utterly to God. It is completely free of selfishness, from self-glory. Jesus’ model leads to a limitless spiritual nature.
Jesus’ model leads us to the antidote to what ails us. He provides not just our salvation, but a clear path for us to lead. Destructive ambition creates disorder, but constructive ambition, such as His creates healing.
The Church shouldn’t just tell the story of salvation and of His sacrifice. The Church should also live out the story of His profound spiritual ambition.
The world desperately needs quiet, humble, noble leadership as it seeks to heal. Darkness prevails where there is no one with the courage and desire to make God known. So, resolve today to bring the light.
Embrace humility. Work to put others first where you might have prioritized yourself. Decenter your own desires. Check your ambition and subordinate it to God’s will for your life and work.
Flee destructive patterns in your life. You can choose what you pursue, after all, and those pursuits will become the building blocks of the life you lead. Devote your limited and precious energies and time to the things that will truly build you up — and make it possible for you to build others up.
Build your character, not reputation. “Make it your ambition to live quietly and peacefully,” we are told in 1 Thessalonians 4. The best leadership — and best ambition — results in a lifetime of good acts done quietly and sometimes thanklessly.
Finally, and most importantly, remember always that only one thing lasts in our lives: our relationship with God.
“Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you,” we read in 1 John 2, “for when you love these things you show that you do not really love God.”
If we want to heal ourselves — or heal the world — we must relinquish our disordered, selfish ambitions. We must embrace the profound peace and healing of the spiritual ambition Jesus showed us.
We must aspire, every moment, to glorify God in our lives and loves. This is ambition pure and undefiled.
Russ Ewell is executive minister of the Bay Area Christian Church. A minister for more than 40 years, Russ’s teaching is rooted in providing hope for those turned off by tradition, and infused with vision for building the transformative church for which the 21st century public hungers. Russ is the author of He’s Not Who You Think He Is: Dropping Your Assumptions and Discovering God for Yourself.
