Over the summer, I signed up for early access to Pottermore, the new Harry Potter website, and a few weeks ago I got the email granting me beta access. One of the activities on the site is completing a quiz in order for the Sorting Hat to put you into one of the four houses of Hogwarts, the wizarding school, according to your character.
As you’ll know if you’re a Harry Potter fan like myself, the House of Gryffindor, Harry’s house, is famed for its courage; Ravenclaw, for intelligence; Hufflepuff, for diligence, and Slytherin for ambition. Slytherin is also the house that has produced the majority of Dark wizards, such as the evil Lord Voldemort, and as such has the reputation of being the “evil” house.
Somewhat to my amusement, I was sorted into Slytherin, which seemed to me ironic since I reckon I’m a pretty good natured guy, a far cry from Lord Voldemort or the unpleasant Draco Malfoy and his racial-purity obsessed chums. But on further reflection, I thought that if you take ambition as the defining quality of a Slytherin, rather than “being evil”, it was actually a pretty fair choice. I really would like to change the world, and yes, I’m aware there’s a hint of megalomania in that statement!
As the Harry Potter books suggest, ambition can be dangerous. More importantly, the Bible has some particularly strong warnings about ambition. But is it all bad?
The apostle Paul wrote in Phillipians 2:3-8:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!
The apostle James also warned in chapter 3 verse 4 of his epistle:
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
Does this mean I should squash my ambitions? Are they nothing but trouble? Or does the phrase “selfish ambition” suggest that there might be such a thing as unselfish ambition? Paul also wrote in Romans 15:20:
It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.
And he told his young protégé Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:1 that:
Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.
So it seems that Biblically speaking not all ambition is necessarily wrong. It seems to me that ambition is good or bad depending on what it’s aiming for. Ambition can be good if it is an ambition for the glory of God and the good of others, but it is easily corrupted into something self-seeking and self-centred.
Our motives are rarely if ever entirely pure. Mixed in with an honest desire to do good is usually a self-centred desire for status, reputation and so on. The worship of our own self-image is one of the subtlest forms of idolatry. It can lead not only to pride, but also to deep discontent and despair as we attempt to maintain a certain image of ourselves.
God’s grace is the liberating antidote to this bitter cycle of pride and worry. Realising that we are accepted and loved by God purely as a free gift of grace in Christ sets us free from having to prove ourselves by our actions, whether that’s to God, others or ourself.
Grace also sets us free from the constant paralysis of analysis that can come from the introspection of always examining our motives to see if they’re pure. Even though our motives are often impure, in Christ, God accepts us and uses us for his purposes anyway. The Holy Spirit is at work in us to help us develop the genuine love for God and others that is the proper motive for our actions. So while we should be self-aware and should seek to put to death our selfish ambitions, that shouldn’t make us do nothing, or prevent us from having any ambition ever.
A good litmus test is whether we’d be happy if someone else achieved the good we are ambitious for. If someone else could do the same thing as well or better, would we be happy in the achievement, or is personal recognition what’s really important to us?
What do you think is a healthy attitude to ambition? How do we get the balance right between wanting to achieve great things, and not being proud and self-centred?