Ambition
"Boys are now taught to regard Ambition as a virtue. I think we shall find that up to the XVIIth Century, and back into pagan times, all moralists regarded it as a vice and dealt with it accordingly." C. S. Lewis
I have been reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, a book that goes to 1800 pages and provides, in addition to brilliant and startling statements, the opportunity for arobic exercise while lying on one's back in bed reading, holding the four pound volume in the air with both hands for about twenty minutes each night. The statement above made me sit up and take notice.
Ambition a vice? It sounds positively unamerican. Have we turned morality upside down over the last two centuries?
I checked what the Oxford English Dictionary says about ambition and found that every definition carried the notion of an ardent desire to rise to high position or attain rank, influence or preferment. W. R. Alger writes that "Aspiration is pure upward desire for excellence without side-references; ambition is an inflamed desire to surpass others."
Okay, that helps somewhat, but even so, don't we like that kind of drive to attain position and influence, to surpass others? Isn't that what we like to see in our students and graduates? People who make a name for themselves. I notice that at the Heartland Christian School Convention they are bringing in recent Christian school grads who have done just that. I know it is possible that these grads never sought to make a name for themselves but were motivated by a "pure upward desire for excellence." But what do we do when we single them out for rising above others as if to say, "See, this is what you can do with a Christian education! You can be a leader of men--and women. You will receive recognition." Isn't this what colleges love to do as they promote their "brand." "Come to our institution," they seem to say, "and you can be educated to become a person of influence and prestige." And then they hold up a successful grad.
It is a very delicate thing we are dancing with here, and I think we might do well to step back frequently and ask ourselves what motivates us to hold up as models so often people who have achieved wealth or fame, people who are winners, rather than the saintly losers, the humble servants. Or why should we hold up anyone at all. Let the achievement, whatever it is, be its own reward.
"The first will be last," Christ tells us, "the greatest among you will be your servant." "Christ made himself nothing," Pauls says in Phillipians, and then he tells us to be like Christ. Do we say to our children and students, to ourselves, "Make yourselves nothing"?
Sorry about the heavy moralizing. I will try to be more upbeat next time.
I have been reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, a book that goes to 1800 pages and provides, in addition to brilliant and startling statements, the opportunity for arobic exercise while lying on one's back in bed reading, holding the four pound volume in the air with both hands for about twenty minutes each night. The statement above made me sit up and take notice.
Ambition a vice? It sounds positively unamerican. Have we turned morality upside down over the last two centuries?
I checked what the Oxford English Dictionary says about ambition and found that every definition carried the notion of an ardent desire to rise to high position or attain rank, influence or preferment. W. R. Alger writes that "Aspiration is pure upward desire for excellence without side-references; ambition is an inflamed desire to surpass others."
Okay, that helps somewhat, but even so, don't we like that kind of drive to attain position and influence, to surpass others? Isn't that what we like to see in our students and graduates? People who make a name for themselves. I notice that at the Heartland Christian School Convention they are bringing in recent Christian school grads who have done just that. I know it is possible that these grads never sought to make a name for themselves but were motivated by a "pure upward desire for excellence." But what do we do when we single them out for rising above others as if to say, "See, this is what you can do with a Christian education! You can be a leader of men--and women. You will receive recognition." Isn't this what colleges love to do as they promote their "brand." "Come to our institution," they seem to say, "and you can be educated to become a person of influence and prestige." And then they hold up a successful grad.
It is a very delicate thing we are dancing with here, and I think we might do well to step back frequently and ask ourselves what motivates us to hold up as models so often people who have achieved wealth or fame, people who are winners, rather than the saintly losers, the humble servants. Or why should we hold up anyone at all. Let the achievement, whatever it is, be its own reward.
"The first will be last," Christ tells us, "the greatest among you will be your servant." "Christ made himself nothing," Pauls says in Phillipians, and then he tells us to be like Christ. Do we say to our children and students, to ourselves, "Make yourselves nothing"?
Sorry about the heavy moralizing. I will try to be more upbeat next time.
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