The Cost of Ambition:
How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse
The Cost of Ambition-
The Toxicity of Ambition?
Many people believe that ambition–striving to be better than others–improves us and advances society. But what if it actually makes us worse?
In The Cost of Ambition, world-renowned theologian and award-winning author Miroslav Volf argues that striving for superiority has negative consequences in all domains of life. Instead, we should strive for excellence. Volf explores:
The Cost Of Ambition
What Søren Kierkegaard, John Milton, and the apostle Paul say about the cost of ambition.
Achieving Excellence
How we can achieve excellence rather than strive for superiority.
Being Plagued By Inferiority
How to stop being plagued by our own sense of inferiority to others.
A Humbler Way Of Life
Why Christians must retrieve a humbler way of life.
Volf also examines what the teachings of Jesus and the stories in Genesis say on the matter. Volf explains how striving to be better than others devalues our achievements, surroundings, and relationships by turning them into mere means to an empty goal. This pursuit, though widely accepted in modern life, is at odds with key Christian convictions.
After exposing the toxicity of ambition, Volf uses contemporary examples to guide us toward striving for excellence.
Endorsements
“This book does not disappoint. Miroslav Volf has always written compellingly and convincingly as he diagnoses the human condition. In his latest, The Cost of Ambition, he guides the reader through the origins of the pervasive yet misguided need to prove one’s superiority and the multitude of problems that such striving creates. Simultaneously humane and scholarly, psychologically astute and theologically sound, Volf suggests that deliverance from this predicament can only come from the proper recognition of the generosity of the glorious and gifting God, ultimately exchanging the enslaving and empty striving for superiority with freedom and fullness in Christ’s accomplishments for us and God’s superiority in relation to us.”
Robert Emmons, editor in chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology; author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier and The Little Book of Gratitude
“Miroslav Volf shows us how our built-in, always-on, hard-to-see preference for superiority over others–as old as human history yet never more relevant than today–works against our own well-being and that of our societies. As a business leader, I’ve seen the destruction caused by teammates who are motivated by one-upping one another to promote their personal interest over the collective goals. The good news is that The Cost of Ambition offers a reliable way out . . . if we are willing to hear and see it.”
Scott Stephenson, former chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Verisk Analytics
“Scholarly but readable, and combining moral clarity with compassion, this book is essential on a defining temptation of our times.”
Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times; host of The Sacred podcast
“A beautifully written, deeply necessary account of the dangers of mimetic ambition in a world that seems to prize it above all else. Volf manages to render the familiar texts he covers startling and new, and in so doing, challenges us to think through some of modern life’s most urgent questions.”
Tara Isabella Burton, author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians
“Aiming to be better than others is morally harmful and chafes against Christian ethics, according to this intriguing meditation. . . . Volf’s argument amounts to a robust critique of the prizing of ambition for its own sake, though he also acknowledges that such striving can lead to social progress and that it’s possible for people to improve themselves without measuring their progress against others’. Armchair philosophers will find much to ponder in this smart take on a world obsessed with forward motion.”
Publishers Weekly
Robert Emmons, editor in chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology; author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier and The Little Book of Gratitude
The author
Miroslav Volf
Miroslav Volf (DrTheol, University of Tübingen) is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture in New Haven, Connecticut. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Worth Living, A Public Faith, Public Faith in Action, and Exclusion and Embrace (winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and selected as among the 100 best religious books of the twentieth century by Christianity Today). Educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, Volf regularly lectures around the world.
Buy The Book
As a pastor’s wife for twenty-five years, Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.
In Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, Barr draws on that experience and her academic expertise to trace the history of the role of the pastor’s wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities that existed throughout most of church history and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers.
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