Devil’s Darts: Ambition

Ambition is “a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.” Achieving…determination…hard work…those are good things, yes? Ambition drives us to create, invent, and grow. It is what pushes us to be better versions of ourselves; to be more Christ-like. Sounds pretty good to me. However, this is one of Satan’s common tactics: using something that is good and twisting it into a dart to be used against us.

The purity of ambition is judged by the motivation behind it. In the NIV, “ambition” is used eight times; six of them are “selfish ambition.” Once Paul uses the phrase in the list of “acts of the flesh” right before listing the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5). Another contrasts selfish ambition with humility (Philippians 2). Unfortunately, this selfish ambition is often focused on improving ourselves so we can show off to others (hello pride!). We work hard at our jobs to make more money to buy the latest toys. We spend more time in school to achieve a better title. We perfect our hostessing game to be seen as the most hospitable.

Unholy ambition also camouflages itself as “being prepared” or “taking care of things.” We often act like we believe that we can out-prep God. If we have all of our ducks in a row and all of our plans thought through, God will have to honor our efforts and nothing will go awry, right? We’re all laughing now because we know that’s not how it works! Tucked away in the hard work of all that planning is the desire for control. Control that drives us to strive for the perfect balance of activities and family time, to advance our career in a certain way and time, or to have the social-media-worthy moments on vacation.

We throw around a saying in our household, “good is the enemy of great.” Sometimes this is a helpful reminder to wait for the great instead of settling for the good now. Or a reminder to finish the project in a great way instead of settling for good enough. However, as two very ambitious perfectionists, we have also learned that having to constantly strive for great (aka, typically perfection) is paralyzing. When the standard is “perfection or nothing,” you often get stuck in nothing.

So how do we redirect selfish, controlling, perfectionistic ambition? Is there a way it can truly be good, with pure motivations? Yes! The other two uses of ambition are again from Paul, but these give us things to be ambitious about. In Romans 15, Paul talks about his ambition to preach the gospel. That’s definitely worth putting hard work and determination into. The second mention is also related to bringing others to the gospel as Paul instructs, “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life…so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders…” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12) Paul is often encouraging people to be bold in the sharing of their faith and gives us this area to apply motivated, hard-charging energy to a purpose higher than ourselves.