Doug Van Pelt

Ambition is evil

...NOT!

Erwin Rapheal McManus calls his #6 entry in the Destiny section: "Neutral Doesn't Get You Anywhere." It's true. No choice is a choice. Sometimes no action is not a safe option. The author talks about how some of us have heard somewhere that ambition is bad, or that it's not truly spiritual. The sermons about not involving God in our lives and allowing Him to lead us as Lord and Master have bent us in a direction that makes us very suspicious of ambition. Like a lot of things, we subtley get out of balance trying to obey or follow one line of thought.

God called for parties and festivals. Jesus went to more than one party in His life. Partying and the like is a good thing. Taken to an extreme and out of balance, of course, can lead to a wrong direction. There's passages in the Bible where God has gotten sick of His people's festivals. Their hearts had turned from Him and their celebrations were making Him angry instead of happy. Some Christians have used these passages on giant signs and come to the Cornerstone Festival to protest outside its gates. At least that's what I'm told. I never bothered to go find the protesters and see what they were doing. I think their efforts are truly misguided. I remember a guy walking around with a "Get serious" kind of tone at a March for Jesus rally in the Twin Cities in Minnesota several years ago. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind about how misguided he was. Yes, God is serious about repentance. Yes, He is serious about the Truth. Yes, there are parts of the body of Christ that are in error doctrine-wise (you could probably say that about all of us, actually, in some form or another). But a day of celebration where the focus is solely on Jesus and His wonderous Person is not the place to bicker and point out the flaws we have. This wasn't a day of protest. It was a day of openly declaring how awesome God is. The organizers all over the world were united in that front: this whole parade was for an audience of One. It was for Him. They even told believers not to wear their pro-life shirts on that day. This was specifically for praising Jesus, not protesting a cause that most all in attendance agreed on -- it just wasn't. Anyone who persisted in this attitude was sorely out of place. Good word, good thought, bad timing.

Believers can get so out of touch, it seems. Why is that? Why do we sometimes get blinded by causes or anger? Why would we take a truth -- like surrender to God being the most important and proper attitude -- and then use that to squash any dreams or ambition we come across? That's kind of twisted. God put ambition in us. He gave us an incredible potential to do some amazing things. Yes, God scattered the people when they built the tower of Babel, but does that mean He wants us to stop building? I don't think so.

"God created us with an intrinsic need to become. We are connected not only to the past and the present, but also to the future. There is a reason why you have a sense of destiny. It was placed there by God, and it woos you to pursue it."

McManus elaborates:

"You can conclude ambition is a bad thing, but like blaming the gas for fueling the car of a drunk driver or even blaming the alcohol, the problem isn't ambition; it is what we are ambitious for.
To lack ambition is to become complacent.
To lose our passion is to become apathetic.
If this is our only option, no that's pathetic!"

Have you noticed how some of God's people have changed the world? The twelve apostles "turned the world upside-down." Martin Luther pursued something with great passion and ambition, and it changed the church. John Wesley, Charles Finney. When it comes to people alive today, sometimes it seems harder to point them out. What's cool is some seeming insignificant people are making a difference that's causing a ripple effect. A principal of a high school here; a songwriter there; a pastor that has a vision for the body of Christ larger than his congregation; a student on campus that's obedient to what God's telling him; someone who's serving the poor in quiet obscurity. They're all changing the world. We're all pretty attracted to the world-changers that get known around the world, but I'm confident that God is well pleased with some people whose names we don't know. I'm glad these people have ambition to change their world.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at October 1, 2007 10:53 AM