Ambition
- Michael Haldas
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
“Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people—which is what I think it does mean—then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.” (C.S. Lewis)
“Ambition means that we desire something so badly that it becomes our purpose in life. I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t have goals, it’s just that we cannot serve two masters. We either serve God or human glory. If we don’t serve God, God departs from us. Why? Because we have the wrong focus.” (Bishop Emilianos)
“This is the true horror of our lives. We are afraid of Christ because, in order to become His disciples, we have to lose something in this world. And the devil has us all caught on the same hook—our ambitions, our pride, our fear of losing something in order to gain Christ. Truly, in order to be Christ’s disciples we have to give up something in this world, and we don’t want to. We want to be saved and at the same time serve this world—this is the strange and unbelievable thing that happens with us…I think a man must rid his mind of this ambition [fame] with all possible care…For if he does not want to achieve fame in this position of authority, he will not dread its loss either.” (Hieromonk Ignaty Shestakov, St. John Chrysostom)
“When writing his first epistle to the Christians at Corinth, St. Paul said we are building our lives with various types of materials, whether common materials such as wood, hay, and straw, or precious materials such as gold, silver, and precious stones. In the Day of the Lord, he explained, God will test each one’s work to reveal it as enduring or merely transitory. If we have spent our lives becoming progressively subhuman through pursuing things that take us away from God, then the fragmentation that occurs at death will simply be the culmination of a life already defined by death. Indeed, if we have tethered ourselves to things that do not endure into the age to come (such as carnal appetites, selfish ambition, worldly gain, etcetera), then death will come as a great shock. The soul will find it hard to leave behind the worldly things to which it has grown attached. On the other hand, if we have begun living eschatologically, using the good, true, and beautiful things of this world as a ladder to climb toward the new heavens and the new earth, then death will be a glorious fulfillment, the penultimate stage before resurrection. For this very reason, we should spend this life preparing for the next, not because the material body is unimportant, but precisely because it is. In fact, the body is so important that the deeds done in the body have lasting consequences.” (Robin Phillips)
“But now times are different! How can one imitate their eremitic life of stillness with the incessant noise of cars, when there are no longer any impenetrable forests, and everywhere are planes and helicopters? In an age of unprecedented pride and ambition, and with the shortage of experienced spiritual mentors, we are saved mainly by humble patience in troubles and sorrows, by sincere thanksgiving to God for everything, being burdened with infirmities, crosses and illnesses.” (Sergey Krapivin)
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