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

"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