When I first read the phrase, “selfish ambition”, I asked myself, “Is there any other kind?” I found this phrase in chapter three of the Epistle of James, one of the most popular books of the New Testament among Christians. His letter lacks the theologically rich and sometimes dense language of Paul’s letters, and instead offers everyday advice on how to live well and avoid the dangers that life offers to us.
Selfish ambition is one of the perils that James warns us to avoid.
Although we often admire ambition in the modern world, the word is trailed by a dark shadow, strongly suggested by phrases like “naked ambition” and “ruthless ambition.” Our ambivalence deepens when we place this character trait alongside the Christian values of love, gentleness, and kindness.
So it is no surprise that James condemns ambition. Yet his use of the modifier “selfish” suggests that there is a kind of ambition that is “unselfish” and that may be in harmony with Christian ideals. We must look to the apostle Paul for clarification.
Paul praises ambition of the right kind in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 when he tells us “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” This is ambition, ambition to cast off sin and live by the commands of God, and it is definitely not selfish ambition.
Perhaps the greatest danger is that a worthwhile ambition will be corrupted by selfishness. Examples abound. Some are highly visible and public, but many occur within the orbit of our personal lives.
One example from my own life occurred a number of years ago as I began to study theology at a nearby University. I had enrolled with good motives, but by the time I walked into my first day of class, my fine intentions were succumbing to an ugly pride. I was convinced I was going to kick theological butt, and I all but strutted into the classroom. I was guilty of what the medieval church called the sin of vainglory – I was seeking the applause of the world instead of the approval of God.
Less than an hour into that first class, the cocky and arrogant attitude I carried inside was crumbling. Discussion was increasingly seasoned with theological terms that were new to me. My discomfort grew as a pair of students on either side of the classroom began hurling verses of scripture back and forth in friendly debate – I no longer remember what the scripture passages were, but clearly, they knew the Bible far better than I did.
I felt like a spectator, watching two skilled tennis players deliver volley after volley across the net, while I could barely swing my racket. I sunk deep into my chair and didn’t say a word during the rest of the class. I was deeply shaken – shaken to the core. That night I lay awake and wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?”
What I was suffering was painful – my false confidence was shattered – but I didn’t feel humiliated. Humiliation is something we do to each other and in that first day of class no one had done anything to me.
Instead I had been humbled – deeply humbled – as my empty pride had been stripped away, as I learned how much I still had to learn. People humiliate us, but only experience can humble us. Something happens that shocks us, that shakes us, that changes our relationship to the world and to life itself. Life will never be the same again.
Being humbled is painful, but not destructive. It puts us in our place so that if we are wise, we will be lifted and made better. When I returned to class the next day, I was ready to resume my journey as a student of theology, but in a much different frame of mind. James says that we “show our understanding by the wisdom that comes from humility.” I had found some of that humility, and perhaps a little bit of that wisdom.
James tells us that humility is the key that allows us to control our selfish ambitions. Yet no pair of human qualities seem more contradictory than humility and ambition, even ambition that is not selfish.
For a Christian this contrast between humility and ambition finds its focus in Jesus. Paul tells us to be ambitious in striving to follow Christ, yet Christ Himself is humility personified. He humbled Himself to become human and then humbled Himself even further by accepting death on the cross, the most humiliating death in the Roman world.
How do we live out this apparent contradiction; to be ambitious and humble at the same time; to be humble in our ambition to be like Jesus; to be ambitious in our pursuit of humility?
The philosopher Walter Kaufman offers an answer to this puzzle. In his book The Faith of a Heretic, he writes of the struggles we face as we strive for excellence. He wonders how we can avoid arrogance as we pursue a worthy ambition.
He coins a new word – “humbition” – ambition restrained by humility, and offers it, along with love, courage, and honesty, as one of his cardinal virtues. Actually, he offers a more poetic definition for his newly-minted term, in words that can guide us to match our means to our ends, to marry our state of mind to our highest aspirations.
He tells us to live with “humility winged by ambition.”
Suggested Reading
Epistle of James, Chapter Thre
