狼友阁

It鈥檚 success and ambition that I want to talk about today, and how my mind has changed on it in both directions over the years. When I arrived as an undergraduate student at a small school not too different from 狼友阁, I had a very particular idea of what success would look like. I would excel academically as I did in high school, pursue a pre-law track, go to an excellent law school, and begin a career in a field that mattered, arguing important cases. In general, I would do things that made a difference in the world. It did not take long for my ambition to falter against the buffeting winds of reality. My grades were not always superb, my personal aptitude was not suited for law, and worst of all, it became apparent that even the people I viewed as successful or influential had only a small part to play in shaping the world for the better. The worst thing of all for my ambition came sophomore year when I embarked on the study of political theory.

Facing Discouragement

I found in these studies of political theory something fascinating but also something discouraging. There was such a profound distance between this hypothetical ideal and the real world that I encountered. The reality of Christian engagement in politics throughout history is profoundly messy and bloody and sinful; it became difficult to imagine being hopeful again, never mind ambitious about what I could accomplish in a single human lifetime.

It was during this period, close to the end of my time in college, that I discovered a fun German word, Weltschmerz, which literally just means 鈥渨orld pain.鈥� It specifically refers to a felt distance between the world as you feel it should be and the world as it is. In the midst of this tension, I took refuge in a kind of cynicism鈥攐r honestly, smug arrogance. My friends who were preparing to go into careers of public service, I thought, were fooling themselves. They were mistaken about the very nature of success itself. I thought ambition was driving them to lead noisy, distracting lives in busy cities where they felt they could have some kind of influence. Looking back, I see a kind of faithless despair, a kind of retreatism, looking down on those who didn鈥檛 share my angst.

Questioning Success

I decided that if I was going to pursue this contemplative life, grad school was the place. What I found in graduate school was a different kind of labor and activity, one that had its own system of ambition and its own markers of success. It became clear at a certain point that at least some people in broader academia viewed success primarily as doing important research at a big university. I realized for the first time that I had merely exchanged one vision of ambition and success for another, that my idealized contemplative life was also a kind of fiction.

So my mind changing on this topic of ambition and success has been a kind of whiplash: coming into college striving for a kind of worldly success, then despairing of the possibility of an effective form of success, and finally settling on what I hope is a more virtuous mean between an excess and a deficiency of pride鈥攕triving to make good use of the talents God has given me.

Cultivating Talents

In the midst of my discouragement, I wrote a letter to the great American agrarian thinker and novelist Wendell Berry, expressing my discouragement that all our study and passion could not turn the tide of sinful humanity. He wrote back to me:

鈥淚 suppose that as long as you live, there will be reasons for discouragement, but I believe that if you learn all you can, keep your eyes open, remain loyal to the things that are good, and find good work that pleases you, you will not have to yield to discouragement. Maybe the best response to what you don't like is remembering what you do like and helping it to survive, to cultivate.鈥�

I don't think I could have put it much better. I also don鈥檛 think I could put it more eloquently than Dr. Davis does in his Christian Mind lecture. We glorify God when we faithfully serve others with the talents we鈥檝e been given鈥攖alents we鈥檙e called to invest, steward, and cultivate rather than hide away. Success on this account could look like a number of things. It could look like faithful, quiet ministry. It could also look like a more flashy career in public service. But in any case, your calling will be a kind of service, as Paul writes to the Philippian church: 鈥淒o nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.鈥�