This reflection was written by Jesse Zink for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community. You will find reflections from previous weeks here.
Dear colleagues,
It is a season of political change, both in this country and in the United States. Members of the Liberal Party are jockeying to be the next prime minister and Donald Trump is preparing for his second term as president, surrounded by a number of people looking for positions of power in his administration. All of this has brought a word to mind: ambition.
Ambition is a word that has always sat somewhat uneasily within the church. Partly, I think, this has to do with its close association with politics and personal success. We speak of ambition often, it seems, in relation to people’s career trajectories or personal goals. Calling someone “ambitious” is, at least in church world, not often meant as a compliment. Don’t you know we’re supposed to be focused on God, the gospel, and the church, not ourselves?
If I may say, I think ambition sits particularly uneasily within the Canadian church, perhaps reflecting a cultural reticence in this country. Stereotypically, Canada is the country that is content with bronze medals at the Olympics. Nearly two decades ago, when Canada launched a program called Own the Podium to increase its (gold) medal count at the Olympics, there was some worried hand-wringing about whether this was a truly Canadian goal. Indeed, last fall the CEO of Shopify, one of the most successful Canadian tech companies, said that Canada has an ambition problem: “This idea of injecting more ambition into the Canadian psyche…is unequivocally necessary.”
It’s right to be cautious around ambition. Ambition can warp our desires, lead us to place our focus in the wrong places, and distract us from what really matters. But it’s also true that ambition can provide the fuel necessary to live into the vocation to which God calls us. Ambition gives us vision, drive, and determination to overcome the obstacles that will naturally appear in our path. I think of St. Paul writing to the Romans, “For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” (Romans 1:11) What a ridiculous idea that a former Pharisee from Palestine would end up in Rome preaching the good news of Jesus to Gentiles. Yet—partly thanks to Paul’s ambition—that is precisely what happened.
One way of nuancing ambition is to ask what our ambition is for. Is our ambition for ourselves and for our own aggrandizement, success, and stature? Is our ambition for others, whether that be children, spouses, friends, or family members? Do we wish to be ambitious to help them succeed? Is our ambition for an institution or an organization, like the church, or for a country, like Canada? Is our ambition for a cause, like the good news of Jesus Christ? The difficult thing is that because we are fallible human beings our ambition can be coloured by all of these things at once. I hope that the people who are considering standing for leader of the Liberal Party are doing so because they are ambitious for what this country can be and what it stands for—but I’m sure many of them are also thinking how great it would be to have their name live on in the history books on the list of Canadian prime ministers.
Like so much that we encounter in our lives, ambition cuts in many directions at once. But I’m not convinced we should immediately run away from it. As you consider your own sense of call and ministry, consider asking yourself what it is you are ambitious for and what you hope can be accomplished through you. On some days, the church could use a little more ambition.