The illusion of safety on American soil was shattered by 9/11. Collapsing along with the twin towers was the assumption that our businesses, homes, families, and all our assets were safe from harm. Personal and national security became priorities for government and industry. Terrorism does that. It slaps the slumber out of our postmodern ambivalence by reminding us of an unpredictable future. And as a father of four, I was grateful for the wake-up call.

But safety gets carried away. For years I’ve watched neighbors drive their kids 200 feet to the end of our street to meet the bus. And we live in a cul de sac.

As I write this, the world has been rocked by a recession fueled by the overreaching ambitions of entire sectors of the economy. The response will be predictable: more hastily passed regulations aimed at limiting risk and protecting our supposedly secure and stable way of life.

In an increasingly fragile world, postmodernity develops an understandable aversion to risk. We make self-protection our passion and have exit strategies from anything that threatens what we need or want.

The Lie of Security

I’m all for minimizing risk and taking responsible steps for protecting people and assets. But postmodernity leads us to believe we must tightly customize and control our safety. Sociologist Anthony Giddens observed, “The measurement and management of risk is more central to our culture than ever before, as the unavoidable cost of navigating a world that we feel that we can actively shape.” Postmodernity loves control and that makes “risk” very unpopular.

But here’s the thing: When risk is avoided, ambition grinds to a halt. You can’t fear one and expect the other to flourish. If we want to stoke ambition—I’m talking about aspirations for the glory of God—we will have to come to terms with risk.

In Hebrews 11, Abraham is commended because “He went out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). Abraham’s ambition to obey God led him down a puzzling path. He went forward, not foreseeing the outcome. Ambition for God meant going, not knowing. And between the hills of “going” and “not knowing” lies the valley of risk.

The Mysterious Suspense of the Christian Life

The Christian life is a kind of mysterious suspense; we act on godly ambition without knowing the result. Like Abraham, we’re going out, not knowing where we are going. It certainly creates a lot of adventure. But it also raises an age-old question: “why?”

Risks and uncertainty are daily reminders of how much greater God is than we are. Think about it: God is all-powerful, controlling all things. God is right now spinning the entire universe like a basketball on his big finger, and at the same time controlling the amount of times you blink as you’re reading this paragraph. Pretty remarkable, huh.

We’re far less impressive. Risk happens because we’re not omniscient or omnipotent. We’re human, we’re finite, our knowledge has limits.

We take risks, God does not.

Risk Is a Gift

Risk always leads us to experience God in a deeper way. Risk rescues us from misplaced security by anchoring us in the eternal. Have you noticed how your desperation for God increases with the uncertainty in your life? The new job, the new child, that new ministry—all of a sudden we’re desperate for God. God delights to put us in this position because it postures us to depend on him and to exercise faith toward him.

It’s how he rescues us from the misplaced security that is such a consuming distraction in the postmodern world.

You can learn more about godly ambition in Dave Harvey's new book Rescuing Ambition.

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A few years ago, I heard an interview with a Christian college professor. Having logged three decades in the classroom, he was asked to compare college students today with those of the past. Decades ago, he indicated, incoming freshmen arrived sporting some serious aspiration. If asked, they could (and would!) become the leaders, innovators, and agents of change for industry, government, and commerce. Their ideas would influence society and determine the course of civilization. Yep, humility was weak but ambition ran strong and deep.

But over time the professor detected a shift. Where postmodernism flourished, ambition went AWOL. Students grew ambivalent. Gone were the dreams for making an impact. In their place was the ethos of “Whatever!”—student-speak for, “believe in nothing, care for nothing, interfere with nothing, and live for nothing.”

The professor knew something vital had been lost.

The Future Lost

Ambition cannot survive without dreams for the future. “To be ambitious,” notes author Joseph Epstein, “is to be future-minded.” But what happens when the future-minded energy of ambition meets the future-ambivalent morass of postmodernity? Ambition stalls. Life becomes the experience of perpetual randomness. We jettison ultimate truth unaware of its connection to hope and the capacity to dream.

But that’s not all. With the cultural dive into postmodernism, future-dependent values like courage, vision, and enterprise also take a hit. Progress and goals give way to indifference and immediate gratification.

We face a generation of young men and women missing a transcendent vision. The engine of ambition lies silent—a quaint artifact from a bygone era.

In The Social Worlds of Higher Education, Mark Edmundson observes this lack of transcendent vision: “It’s a lack of capacity for enthusiasm that defines what I’ve come to think of as the reigning generational style. Whether the students are sorority fraternity types, grunge aficionados, piercer/tattooers, black or white, rich or middle class, … they are, nearly across the board very, very, self-contained. On good days, they display a light, appealing glow; on bad days, shuffling disgruntlement. But there’s little fire, little passion to be found. . . . This is a culture intensely committed to a laid-back norm.”

Colleges are not the problem; they simply reflect the problem. Where postmodernism flourishes, passion never reaches above the level of critical anger at things that don’t seem right. Causes have momentum only to the extent that they have viral cachet. And everything matters right now, only so far as it is right now. The future is not intentionally snuffed out. Postmodernism just hangs a “Do Not Disturb” sign over doors of opportunity. Few risk the hassle of knocking. Fewer still exert the energy to walk expectantly through the door.

The Future Found

God wants to rescue ambition. But not to build future monuments to our own glory. I’m talking about an instinct that looks for new ways to glorify God through our dreams. Paul said, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13–14).

Think about it: Paul’s got one thing in view. He wants to forget all that once defined him and press forward into future exploits. For Paul the future was so essential he pressed towards it with dreams and desires, with fiery ambition!

I want the kind of ambition he describes. What about you?

As Christians do we see the opportunity in postmodern culture for the life-transforming message of Jesus Christ? Is there anything more toxic to apathy than the heaven or hell implications of the gospel? The more I study Scripture and the culture around me, the more I see a world of people who have not only run out of answers, they have run out of questions.

We need ambition—godly ambition that lives grateful for past success while stretching and straining forward to what lies ahead. An ambition that will not rest until more churches are planted, more marriages helped, more art created, more people reached, more businesses started, more disciples made. An ambition aware of postmodernity but living for eternity.

You can learn more about godly ambition in Dave Harvey's new book Rescuing Ambition.

Doctrine Book

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.

Dave Harvey is responsible for church planting, church care, and international expansion for Sovereign Grace Ministries. He has a DMin from Westminster Theological Seminary and his books include When Sinners Say I Do and Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World. His new book is called Rescuing Ambition.

My dad was a steelworker in Pittsburgh. So was his father and his grandfather and, well, you get the picture. I worked in the steel mill for one summer and swore I would never go back. It wasn’t just the dirt or the heat. It was many of the millworkers themselves—their vacant conversation and dreamless lives. The culture seemed to suck the sweet center out of all aspiration, leaving it hollow and empty. That summer juiced my dreams. They got bigger and stronger in search of a different future, one that would never include open-hearth furnaces or steel-toed boots. I think for a lot of summer employees, the steel mill rescued their ambition.

Swapping Progress for Peace?

Believe it or not, postmodernity is like an ideological steel mill. What started as an architectural style has morphed into a worldview—a code for explaining contemporary Western cultures. We may not see it, but we breathe it each day.

Postmodernity is fundamentally a reaction to the things modernity promised for nearly two centuries. If modernism can be thought of in terms of conquest and ambition, postmodernism is post-conquest and post-ambition. Progress is replaced by the pursuit of personal peace. Ambition, like 8-tracks and moon launches, is a fond memory from a by-gone era.

No Ambition Without Truth

But here’s the real rub: postmodernism is built upon a denial of objective truth. Groups asserting objective truth are seen at best as unenlightened, at worst as criminally intolerant. Postmodernism, at its heart, is a distrust of anyone who says “That’s the way it is” or “This is the truth” (Wellum, Reclaiming the Center). In the postmodern world, truth is up for grabs, and there are few takers.

So how does postmodernity affect ambition? The same way the steel mill seemed to empty the future for so many hardworking people. It hijacks dreams, softens motivation, and renders us indifferent. By attacking objective truth, postmodernity erodes the ground needed for ambition. When people in a culture hold to the objectivity of knowledge, they grow optimistic regarding progress and human accomplishments. Truth is a worthy goal and an attainable quest. The journey towards a satisfying and achievable end produces individuals who are industrious and enterprising. Aspiration has a foundation and meaning. But where there is no ground and meaning—no greater truth in the world, nothing bigger that you are a part of—enterprise and ambition rust away in ruins.

But where knowable truth is denied, ambition suffocates. Meandering replaces meaning, confusion trumps conviction, ambivalence swallows aspiration. We become living symptoms of the last days, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:7).

D. A. Carson describes the ambition void left when the moral, spiritual base of a culture gives way in the shifting sands of relativism:

Individualism once allied with a societal assumption of objective truth and eternal verities could generate at least some men and women of courage, honor, vision; individualism allied with philosophical pluralism and the scarcely qualified relativism of post-modernity generates 'a world without heroes.'

Where is your ambition these days? Is it swallowed up in the weeds of neglect? Are you content to live in a world without heroes? Have you ever aspired to be a hero yourself—at least in the everyday sense of vigorous commitment to living for the glory of God?

Christians exist in a postmodern world, but we live in an eternal kingdom. That alone makes true ambition possible. Once ambition is rescued, then heroes aren’t far behind. And whether you work in a pulpit, a cubicle, or a steel mill, that’s good news.

You can learn more about godly ambition in Dave Harvey's new book Rescuing Ambition.

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