“God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life, that I may burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like You, Lord Jesus.”– Jim Elliot, martyr
I closed out the last Life&Leadership lesson with the following challenge:
Dylan Thomas’s words haunt me as I get older. “Do not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. . . [And even in your] “old age burn and rave at close of day . . . rage rage against the night.” Let us not suppress that noble rage; let us be ambitious for things that matter.
For the last 10 days, I wrestled the notion of ambition–particularly in one of my heroes, Abraham Lincoln. As we discussed in the last letter, Lincoln possessed a “soaring ambition — that little engine that knew no rest.” He had this noble rage to do things matter, a celestial fire to leave a mark upon this world.
Did his ambition make him great?
And:
Do I have a similar ambition, a fierce resolve, a noble rage, a celestial fire for things I believe that matter? For causes bigger than me?
Have I lost it as I’ve grown older?
Am I still willing to step into rivers that change history and change me?
Or am I happy to sit and reflect, here where I sit now, above my safe and lazy river?
Or am I willing to step into raging rivers?
God, make me dangerous!
Biographies always challenge me. I think that’s why I love to read the stories of men and women at war.
One biography that changed my life as a college student was Shadow of the Almighty by Elizabeth Elliot. It’s a story of Jim Elliot, a missionary martyred in what he called “a war with spiritual principalities and powers in high places.” Quoting often from Elliot’s journal, Elizabeth Elliot tells the story of her husband’s life and eventual death in January 1956 at the hands of a primitive Ecuadoran tribe (known by Elliot as the Aucas). Jim’s life and thoughts still echo in my mind after over 45 years. As a college student, I memorized the following thought from Jim’s journal as he wrestled with following God fully. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Now, wondering if the idle sticks of my life are now but a smoldering wick, I need Jim Elliot’s words to fan into flame a holy zeal, a fierce resolve, a Kingdom ambition.
Jim Elliot wrote elsewhere in his journal:
“Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God. . . We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with.
But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places.
Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are ‘sideliners’—coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own.
Oh that God would make us dangerous!”
Why am I Not Dangerous?
First, I’ve misunderstood “ambition” and its role in leadership.
Reading various biographies of Abraham Lincoln and other great leaders continue to reveal this misunderstanding about ambition and leadership. As we saw in our last Life&Leadership letter, Lincoln had an untiring ambition to do something that mattered. Lincoln possessed a fierce ambition. Lincoln never wavered in his intent to ensure the survival of the American experiment — even at the cost of a bloody Civil War. Lincoln felt deeply that his calling was to create an enduring great nation, to not let the American experiment fail.
His ambition, even in the darkest days of the 1863-64, was firm and resolute.
Reading the Scriptures more carefully has also challenged certain assumptions about ambition.
For example, I looked again recently at Jesus’s conversation with the “Sons of Thunder” in Mark 10:35-45. James and John boldly ask if they could sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory.
I’ve often thought: what presumption! what pride! Our meek and mild Jesus is certainly opposed to such desires, such ambition.
But with further reflection, I see it differently now.
Rather than rebuke James and John for their ambition, Jesus asks instead: Are you willing to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am being baptized?
In other words, it is as if a fierce Jesus is asking James and John:
Is your resolve fierce enough to suffer what it takes for glory?
Are you willing to be so dangerous, so extraordinary, that the world will want to kill you?
Could it be that God wants us to be so ambitious–to be so fierce in our resolve for His kingdom that we’d pay the last full measure of devotion for it?
I can’t help but recall our focus at Gettysburg on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Recall what was said to him by one of his men: “General, you have the soul of the lion.”
Keep that Fierce Resolve, Just Temper It with Humility
Temper is a beautiful word in the world of metallurgy. To temper iron is to apply a special heat treatment technique to quenched or hardened iron to achieve greater toughness by decreasing the hardness of the alloy. The reduction in hardness counterintuitively increases the ductility or malleability of the iron and thus decreases the brittleness of the iron.
If iron or steel is too hard–in other words untempered, it becomes brittle and shatters easily. It breaks at first use. But if the iron is properly tempered, it becomes tougher by decreasing its hardness.
To temper something, let’s say “ambition,” is to make it stronger or tougher by decreasing its hardness or brittleness.
Notice the delicate balance in Jesus’ rebuke to the disciples and their indignation over James’s and John’s request for kingdom glory. Jesus tells them, in my paraphrase, have a fierce “willing to die for” resolve for the kingdom but temper it always with humility.
Notice how Jesus is thus saying to the disciples: “temper that Kingdom ambition with humility. By becoming weaker, you become stronger.”
“If you want to be great, you must serve.”
In other words, want to be great! Just temper it with service.
“If you want to be first, you must be slave of all.”
In other words, want to be first! But temper that ambition by positioning yourself to advance others.
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
In other words, the Lion of Judah whose “zeal for God’s house consumed him” admits he too came both “serving and willing to die for” a Kingdom plan!
The more I study the Scriptures and the biographies of great leaders, the more I see I misunderstood this counterintuitive nexus of “ambition and humility.” Or in the words to Chamberlain, “You have the soul of the lion and the heart of the woman.”
Second, I needed the insight of Jim Collins and his work on Level 5 Leadership.
James Collins, in his book Good to Great, describes this balance in what he calls Level 5 leadership. Level 5 Leaders are those who possess a fierce resolve and a personal humility.
Humility and will seem to be strange bedfellows—a counterintuitive duality: modest and willful, shy and fearless, humble and dangerous.
Our 2×2 matrix helps us again. Collin’s places Level 5 Leaders with both high ambition and high humility in quadrant 2. How would you label the empty quadrants? How would you describe (or who would you put in) Quadrant 1? Or Quadrant 3? Or 4?
Collins’s description of “Level 5” leadership arises out of his five-level hierarchy, which refers to skill levels. In the leader, Level 1 relates to individual capability, Level 2 to team skills, Level 3 to managerial competence, and Level 4 to leadership as traditionally conceived.
Level 5 leaders possess the skills of levels 1 to 4 but also have an “extra dimension”: a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Such leaders possess a fierce resolve to do absolutely whatever it takes to make the cause, the organization, the mission, the nation, the work—not themselves—and they have the will to do whatever it takes (within the bounds of the organization’s core values) to make good on that ambition.
They are as such incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the “institutions and its greatness” and not for themselves. Their ego or self-interest is channeled toward the larger goal of building into a larger cause or mission; they direct their personal ambitions and capabilities into that larger cause or mission.
Jim Collins clarifies his description here (worth watching):
https://www.jimcollins.com/media_topics/media.html#*Level5Leadership
The following chart summarizes the TWO SIDES OF THE LEVEL 5 LEADER.
Third, I was too afraid of losing to risk winning.
I love this recently colorized photo of Abraham Lincoln sitting with General George McClellan–the senior commander of the Union Army of the Potomac in 1862. Not long after this photo, Lincoln would fire McClellan.
Prior to posing for this photo, Lincoln took a few moments to write to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. “Mary dear, we are waiting to be seated for a photo. McClellan does not have any trouble with being seated. He likes to sit.”
Lincoln and McClellan – A Study in Contrasts: Fierce but Tempered Ambition vs Fear of Losing
Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her masterful work, A Team of Rivals, shows over and over how Lincoln lived above the tit for tat fray of political positioning. While keeping his eye on the prize, Lincoln endured and overlooked whatever personal indignities came his way. Every member of his cabinet considered himself a better choice for the office of the president.
But, gradually, as one biographer stated, Lincoln’s “magnanimous soul” won over every one of his political rivals. One person Lincoln couldn’t win over was George McClellan.
McClellan’s Lack of Humility
In a letter to his wife, McClellan showed in contrast to Lincoln an ambition untempered by humility. He wrote the following comment about Lincoln. “The good of my country requires me to submit to all this from men whom I know to be greatly my inferior socially, intellectually and morally! There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the “Gorilla”.
In addition to calling Lincoln a Gorilla, McClellan often complained about his other superiors: In another letter to his wife, he wrote that “I have insisted that [Sec. of War] Stanton shall be removed & that [Cmdr General] Halleck shall give way to me as Comdr in Chief. I will not serve under him – for he is an incompetent fool.”
In one famous incident, Lincoln was snubbed by McClellan.
One Saturday afternoon, Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward left the White House and walked to the hotel where McClellan was staying. They waited in the parlor for McClellan to arrive. When he arrived at the hotel, McClellan passed by the President and Secretary of State without greeting them and went to his room for a nap. Lincoln and Seward waited for two hours in his parlor and finally left. Lincoln returned to the White House, having failed to get his appointed general to speak to him. Lincoln’s aide, John Hay suggested that McClellan be held accountable for such disrespectful treatment of his president, the Commander in Chief.
Lincoln commented, “Now, now John, if McClellan will only give me victories, I’ll gladly hold his horse for him.”
Despite these personal affronts, Lincoln kept trying to get McClellan to demonstrate “a fierce resolve” in the prosecution of the war.
Lincoln, in his commitment to the cause, seemed to say to himself about McClellan: “If I can’t get humility, I’ll at least take ambition.” Unfortunately, Lincoln could never force McClellan to possess the soil of the lion—-or in Shakespeare’s famous words from Henry V to his men, the “action of the tiger.”:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; . . .
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
McClellan’s Failure to Act
After the Battle of Antietam, McClellan asked for more horses so he could pursue the defeated Confederates. Lincoln was frustrated and wrote to McClellan saying “Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”
Cmdr General Halleck said of McCellan that “There is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can conceive of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass.”
Lincoln grew increasingly tired of McClellan’s failure to act, finding in McClellan “a case of the slows”.
McClellan often explained this sluggishness in acting that as “I’m waiting for the right time” or “I’m waiting till the numbers are in my favor.” Unfortunately, McClellan convinced himself that he was always outnumbered, regardless of what his intelligence told him. As historians reviewed the behavior of McClellan, they concluded two things: “McClellan always (1) overestimated the size of the enemy by a factor of two and (2) underestimated the size of his own strength by the same factor.”
Now, McClellan did many things right–he trained his army well, he procured the best equipment, he improved morale. That McClellan was academically very bright, personally brave, and a good organizer wasn’t in doubt. Neither was the fact that he was a good unit commander and popular with the men under his command. His men loved him and he loved them. They marched well and proudly under his leadership–with the best rifles, blankets and tents.
But McClellan would never send them into the fight.
McClellan was unwilling to risk the thing he loved.
Frightened of failure and the consequences, McClellan failed to act.
McClellan was too afraid of losing to risk winning. So Lincoln fired him.
Later, to his surprise, the men who loved him in 1862 failed to support his presidential bid against Lincoln in 1864. For even the common soldier knew at the time that whether he liked it or not, he was in the army to fight. Not to sit.
Fourth, I need to learn to Call Others to Do Something Great
Leaders like Lincoln, possessed of professional will and personal humility, don’t hesitate to call others to do something great. Since their ambition is always channeled toward the goal, the larger cause or mission, great leaders aren’t hesitant to call people to join them. If I’m all about me, even in my pride and narcissism, I’d be hesitant to call people to a “willingness to die” resolve.
Bruce Larson recorded the following story about Lincoln in his book, What God Wants to Know,
Lincoln often slipped into the Wednesday-night service at New York Presbyterian Church where Dr. Gurley was the pastor. In order not to disrupt things, he would listen from the privacy of the pastor’s study which adjoined the sanctuary. A young aide usually came along and on one particular night he asked Lincoln how he liked the sermon. “i thought it was well thought through, powerfully delivered, and very eloquent” was the reply. “Then you thought it was a great sermon?” the young man continued. “No,” said Lincoln, “it failed. It failed because Dr. Gurley did not ask us to do something great.”
Lincoln’s Speeches Show this Call to Serve the Greatness of the Cause
Few of us went thru school without memorizing the Gettysburg Address, probably the most well-known and loved speech in American history. It taps into those God-ingrained desires to live for things beyond ourselves–by honoring those before us who paid the last full measure of devotion and by challenging us to complete the tasks ahead–that “good things” may long endure upon the earth.
As the 2nd Inaugural Address also shows, Lincoln had a unique ability to call out a commitment to the shared values of his audiences.
Listen for example to the prose-poetry of the last lines of the 2nd Inaugural speech:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Whenever we speak as leaders, we too should call others to do great things. To be ambitious for things that matter. To be dangerous for Christ kingdom.
Movements depend upon our willingness to walk in faith and to take Kingdom size risks. Faith engenders hope which counteracts fear. Despite the challenges we face, the Scriptures are clear— the forces with us are stronger than the forces opposing us. Jesus is becoming King in every place. Any movements we attempt to build will die from an unwillingness to risk, to exercise a fierce resolve.
Of course, in the immediate fight, victory is never certain.
But we’ll never be dangerous if we make the McClellan Mistake of “overestimating the strength of the enemy and underestimating our own strength.”
Let’s be ambitious for the Kingdom, tempering that ambition with humility.
