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

by Miroslav Volf

Publisher:

Brazos

, 2025

Overview

Many people believe that ambition, understood as striving to be better than others, improves us as individuals and advances our whole 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.

Working his way backward in time, Volf explores what three influential thinkers--Søren Kierkegaard, John Milton, and the apostle Paul--say about the cost of ambition. He also explores what the teachings of Jesus and the stories in Genesis say on the matter. Volf explains that striving to be better than others, though widely accepted as part of modern life, devalues our achievements, things that surround us, and relationships because it makes them into mere means to an empty goal of being better than someone else. He reveals ambition's negative consequences in all domains of life, showing that it is at odds with the key convictions of Christian faith.

After unpacking the toxicity of ambition, Volf uses contemporary examples to guide readers to a better goal: striving for excellence.

Key Features

• Improves us as individuals and advances our whole society.
• Argues that striving for superiority actually makes us worse.
• Reveals ambition’s negative consequences in all domains of life.

Product Details

• Title: The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse
• Author: Miroslav Volf
• Series: Theology for the Life of the World
• Publisher: Brazos
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Success; Ambition
• ISBNs: 9781587434815, 1587434814
• Resource ID: LLS:THCSTFMBTNSTNGMKSWS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-05-20T20:54:17Z

About Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf, is Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. He is also the Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. as well as the Evangelical Church in Croatia.