The Cost of Ambition

Is your self-worth tied to your ambitions? Or is your value set by your mere humanity?

Join Miroslav Volf for a guided exploration of The Cost of Ambition, and learn how striving to be better than others makes us worse.

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Does Christianity have anything to say to a culture dominated by competition? From sports and social media to education, business, and politics, many of the institutions of our contemporary life are organized around the expectation of ambition and the quest for superiority. We constantly compare ourselves to other people—whether the result is that we look good or bad, whether we are flattered or discouraged by what we see. We always know where we sit on whichever hierarchy is most relevant at a given moment. Our self-worth is often unsteady, tied as it is to these shifting hierarchies, and our relationships with others flourish only as long as we hold envy at bay.

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As competitions escalate and life seems to move faster every day, ambition seems like the only solution—the only way to have enough for me and my family, the only way to be recognized as significant, the only way to quiet any lingering voices of doubt in my head—and so the competition hurtles onward, only getting fiercer by the day.

Is this the inevitable way of the world? Can Christians bear witness to something better?

You don’t have to achieve yourself; your very self is a gift, and your worth is not dependent on your accomplishments or your standing before others. It has never been more countercultural to remember this, but it has never been more important, either. We need to understand just how deeply rooted our lives are in the grace of God—and how that cuts away the possibility of superiority over other humans, so that the door is opened towards striving for what is truly excellent.

That’s why we have created a discussion guide for a book by Miroslav Volf called The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse. It’s a book that can help us think carefully about where our identity comes from, and how this can give us some distance from the competition for status we see all around us. It will help call you back to a better life—more loving, more lovely, more meaningful, and more rooted in the One who has given us everything we have.

This guide is an invitation to count for yourselves the cost of ambition—and the glories of living without it.