The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse - Hardcover

by Miroslav Volf (Author)

New York Times bestselling author Miroslav Volf on why striving for superiority is at odds with the Christian faith

"[A] smart take on a world obsessed with forward motion."--Publishers Weekly

Many people believe that ambition--striving to be better than others--improves us and advances society. But what if it actually makes us worse?

In The Cost of Ambition, world-renowned theologian and award-winning author Miroslav Volf argues that striving for superiority has negative consequences in all domains of life. Instead, we should strive for excellence. Volf explores:

● what S ren Kierkegaard, John Milton, and the apostle Paul say about the cost of ambition
● how we can achieve excellence rather than strive for superiority
● how to stop being plagued by our own sense of inferiority to others
● why Christians must retrieve a humbler way of life

Volf also examines what the teachings of Jesus and the stories in Genesis say on the matter. Volf explains how striving to be better than others devalues our achievements, surroundings, and relationships by turning them into mere means to an empty goal. This pursuit, though widely accepted in modern life, is at odds with key Christian convictions.

After exposing the toxicity of ambition, Volf uses contemporary examples to guide us toward striving for excellence.

Back Jacket

"Volf has always written compellingly and convincingly as he diagnoses the human condition"

Many people believe that ambition, understood as striving to be better than others, improves us as individuals and advances society. But what if the opposite is true?

In The Cost of Ambition, world-renowned theologian and award-winning author Miroslav Volf argues that striving for superiority actually makes us worse. He unpacks the toxicity of ambition and guides us to a better goal: striving for excellence.

"This book does not disappoint. Miroslav Volf has always written compellingly and convincingly as he diagnoses the human condition. In The Cost of Ambition, he guides the reader through the origins of the pervasive yet misguided need to prove one's superiority and the multitude of problems that such striving creates. Simultaneously humane and scholarly, psychologically astute and theologically sound, Volf suggests that deliverance from this predicament can only come from the proper recognition of the generosity of the glorious and gifting God, ultimately exchanging the enslaving and empty striving for superiority with freedom and fullness in Christ's accomplishments for us and God's superiority in relation to us."
--Robert Emmons, editor in chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology; author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier and The Little Book of Gratitude

"Scholarly but readable, and combining moral clarity with compassion, this book is essential on a defining temptation of our times."
--Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times; host of The Sacred podcast

Author Biography

Miroslav Volf (DrTheol, University of Tübingen) is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture in New Haven, Connecticut. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Worth Living, A Public Faith, Public Faith in Action, and Exclusion and Embrace (winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and selected as among the 100 best religious books of the 20th century by Christianity Today). Educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, Volf regularly lectures around the world.