Tom Burnett: . Miroslav, welcome to the show.

Miroslav Volf: Ah, it’s so great to be with you.

Tom Burnett: I’m looking forward to asking you about your new book, but I wanna start first by just asking you, what were your, your passion interests, growing up? Whether educational or hobbies, what really set you on fire?

Miroslav Volf: I wanted to have fun with my friends. That was my passion. If you can call it that. I liked to play. I liked friends. Later on, I liked girls. That was the extent of my ambition. Pretty low bars, as far as that’s concerned.

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: That changed when I, turned about 16, then there was a big, huge shift, I came to more consciously to embrace, uh, faith.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: I did so, uh, partly under the influence of, uh, Dan, uh, the person who was to become my brother-in-law. He was this incredibly charismatic person, with strong interests in education, in knowledge. And he captured, uh, my imagination. And suddenly I turned out to be the best student, uh, in my high school. I had broader academic interest. I would work nights through, because I would be reading, I’d be reading, uh, literature, I’d be reading philosophy, whatever I got my hands on. And there was a certain, uh, competitiveness involved in this; I wanted to show them that I was somebody.

 Tom Burnett: As you headed from high school to, to college and beyond, tell me how your sort of academic and professional interests developed for our listeners who don’t know your career.

Miroslav Volf: Yeah, so, so early on I started, even while I was in high school, I started, doing correspondence courses in theology. Then I studied philosophy at, state University as well as classical. I studied theology at Fuller Theological Seminar.

From there, I went to Germany, I did PhD in theology. Returned, taught in former Yugoslavia. and got a position at Fuller. And then, uh, after seven years there, started teaching at Yale. So I’ve been at Yale 27 years

Tom Burnett: Yeah, well you certainly got a, a multicultural international, uh, education experience, West Coast, East Coast, United States, UK, Yugoslavia. Do you feel like the education, the different languages, different countries, different groups you’ve interacted with, like some very different cultures, has shaped your theological understandings in some way of who we are as humans, how we relate to the world, our relationship with the transcendent?

Miroslav Volf:  Yes, yes. Uh, I, I think those influences were profound, and very, very different. I think maybe the most important influences were when I was still a very young kid. I had a nanny. who was, were very poor, and she was poorer than we were. So we, we hosted her, and I absolutely adored her. This incredibly beautiful, patient person who know how not to love. And she has shaped, I think, my own imagination, and I have come to think of her as a window into who, God for me is.

Tom Burnett: Wow.

Miroslav Volf: I say, when I think about God, I always have this image of Auntie Milita. This is my image of God.

Tom Burnett: Well, I’m gonna turn next to, to your newest book, The Cost of Ambition. In the beginning of your book, you recount the story of Cain and Abel, and it’s a story to me that I’ve always found quite perplexing. I wonder if you can just recount for our listeners what that story is and what you’ve learned from it.

Miroslav Volf: Yeah, there’s so many things to learn from those stories. And partly there’s so many things to learn because they are kind of open-ended,

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: them in multiplicity, of ways. Um, I was fascinated early on with that story. And he, here you have, uh, and especially for the topic of striving for superiority or guarding superiority, because striving for superiority means also attending to the superiority that you have and not just aspiring to superiority that you do not have uh, yet. And at the beginning of this story, Eve. gives birth to two boys. Uh,

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: She is a proud mother, who is totally delighted in her son with this child. She became a mother. The second one, she names vanity. so, so, so to speak that he is already from the get-go in the eyes of his own mother a kind of nobody. Right. and, uh, have translated into his own, uh, self-understanding. We, we don’t see that, but we see the self-understanding of Cain. He’s the most important. When his image of himself as superior gets to be upended by God, looking favorably on the, uh, offering of, uh, Abel, but not on his own offering for whatever reason, that that was his whole world, uh, is turned upside down.

So that, the first, uh, murder is a result of striving to maintain the superior status that I have in relation to the one who seemed that ought to be inferior to me. So that’s striving for superiority is, I think, clearly inscribed within the first pages of, of the Bible

Tom Burnett: Yeah. And what is the warning that God gave to Cain? I feel like it’s, like, haunts me. I can’t quite remember the phrasing of it.

Miroslav Volf: Well, that sin was crouching at the door.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: it’s almost like, like sin is like some, some kind of an animal who’s ready to pounce. Uh, but Cain can’t quite resist it. Uh, and that’s also a very interesting side of that, that story, because. Not just striving for superiority, but any form of, uh, kind of negative behavior can come at us with, with the obsession. And, uh, no matter how hard we push, we sometimes cannot let, let go of it. We have been almost like captured, held captive. And I think that’s a, that’s a very important, uh, thing to keep, keep in mind, I think sometimes that is the case with striving for superiority. It’s an alien force.

Tom Burnett: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we find ourselves today in, in your culture and mine, uh, a very competitive society, benchmarking ourselves against other people’s performance, whether a number of publications or books or awards.

And as I was reading your book, and I was, was reflecting if one values high performance and achievement, I can I can clearly imagine two ways to, to motivate oneself. One would identify somebody that I want to be better at. So that’s much of what your book, uh, consists of is, you know, benchmarking against others and trying to outdo them. Another would be. To strive to be the best version of yourself. It’s like, I might be able to throw a baseball 60 miles an hour if I, if I train really hard, maybe I could learn to throw 80. Those are two different kinds of motivations I think, that could both lead to strong improvement and good results. In your mind, to what degree does it matter what motivation you draw from in order to pursue high-achieving activities?

Miroslav Volf: That is a really central question; critique of striving for superiority is not the critique of striving for improvement. It’s not a critique of striving to be better. It’s a critique of striving to be better than somebody else. And the difference between comparing myself with other person, rather than comparing our myself with where I was before yesterday or the, or, two weeks before, that is a really fundamental, and very important thing.

When I compare myself with my, with myself, I can play on my strengths. I can play to what I want to. Be qua myself, of course, this pre-presumes a certain kind of knowledge of who I am, what my capacities are, but I can remain true to myself and continue to engage in this, uh, growth effort of striving. But if I compare myself with others, I am always shaped by, uh, a common denominator, something that’s outside me that may fit me, but they may not divert me from the strengths that I have. But just because I want to be better than somebody else, I want to excel in something in which I am not so good at.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: It can be deceiving, though, uh, in some ways even striving to be better than one cell. What’s valuable in me about me?

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: Determine what value I should embrace and what is valuable?

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: That comes because of a certain kind of projections that are made on me, or I have looked, and saw something attractive outside. And so they strive to be better than myself often is dependent on the gaze of others and can result in a certain kind of inauthenticity if you,

Miroslav Volf: Hence, I speak about striving for a certain kind of objective excellence, of value that I can anchor myself in, and then striving for that.

Tom Burnett: Yeah, I had a great conversation on this podcast with a journalist, Jennifer Wallace. She coined the term toxic achievement culture and of how incredibly tortured both students and their parents felt. Those who were the best, the varsity athletes, the straight A students of valedictorians would just, would feel an absolutely crushing pressure too always be the best. A senior in high school, and in an interview she said, you know, sometimes I’ve gotten so little sleep from all that I’ve been doing to get to where I wanna go, that when I’m running track, I’ll run with my eyes closed to try to get a little bit of rest. What a disappointment it is of achievement. This person’s trying to catch a few winks while they’re running, you know, an 800-meter

Miroslav Volf: Yeah. There’s always somebody coming after me and almost always somebody who is better. And there’s always the possibility that tomorrow I will fail somehow.

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: There’s no space there to strictly speaking to, uh, uh, for rest. There’s no space for certain kind of sense of, dynamic contentment in which you can grow, but nonetheless, you are not obsessed by, uh, by achievements.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm. What about the, the good sides of competition? I imagine that developments we’ve seen in the arts, in music and science and technology medicine.

A lot of these achievements are the results of, strivers, of people who are pushing hard and achieving things that no one else has done before. How do you see the sort of balance of perhaps the good effects of, of competition achievement, and the bad effects?

Miroslav Volf: That’s a, a great question. I, and I think it’s very important to note, there have been achievements we would not have, were it not strivers, for superiority. And the question then is, well, on the whole, are those achievements, do they justify the kind of ill effects for superiority that can manifestly also be shown, And so my, my sense was in this book is because we are unlike a generation of scholars in the 18th century, 19th century, who are very, very attuned to the dark sides. Striving for superiority have kind of forgotten about the dark side, emphasizing only, the bright side of striving for superiority.

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: them, it was, some of them it was, uh, exactly the other way around. Jean Jacque Russo was one of those kicker guards, certainly was one of those. I think to some degree, maybe more balanced, uh, was Adam Smith, uh, who was striving, for superiority.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: That needs to be stressed. But on the other hand, we have also extraordinary example of very top achievers. Who were not strivers for superiority, one in the domain of economy. That’s very important to a lot of us. that’s Warren Buffett.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: he, in principle, will not, strive for superiority. He will strive for, for excellence. So always is, oh, is it possible to, redeem competition, redeem, striving? So that it isn’t always undermined by its shadow side of oscillating between the knowing, sense of inferiority, and then fleeting sense of a superiority. And I, I think it’s possible, and I find often that it’s liberating

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: In that, when I, when I say I don’t really care to compare myself with others, suddenly, uh, I, I’m freed from that, from that pressure. It doesn’t mean that I’m freed, just to sit and twiddle my thumbs. I am ambitious enough in a, in a sense to desire to work and to, to perform well without, uh, threats in a sense to myself.

Tom Burnett: How do I put myself in a position to admire people that achieve, rather than have that make me instantly compare myself to them?

Miroslav Volf: Well, I mean, we, we all have that experience in domains in which comparison would be kind of crazy, and one thinks to compare oneself.

Tom Burnett: Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: One example, uh, Michael Jordan, and his basketball skills. Now I observe him what he does, and I think, oh my, this is absolutely out of this world. It, it’s both incredible achievement. And then there’s this grace and beauty, in it that, uh, this is nowhere near to anywhere where I can ever, uh, go. And it’s a pure admiration, and I think, oh, thank you, God,

Now, when I look more deeply in, into his particular kinds of performance, then I see, well, it has been bought at, at incredibly high price of absolutely relentless striving for not by, but for superiority. But there are other examples, right? who also strike us as, as great, achievers. I don’t necessarily envy them. I rejoice over it. And somehow when I think about this envy that often attends our own relation to others, I always think it’s really not worthy of me.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: Not worthy of my humanity. I have diminished myself by envy.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: And, and I think that there, there actually isn’t any reason for it. But I think, at the heart of the problem, for me, is that we have come to think our value is derived. Primarily and fundamentally, the work that we perform and how we perform that work, and once you derive your value from your achievements, then you end up in this space

Tom Burnett: Right?

Miroslav Volf: If you have achieved just slightly less than somebody else, you are lesser thansomeone else. This move I, my achievement is not as great. That’s the bedrock, where I want to come so that I can, my own self can rest on that.

Tom Burnett: Where should I attempt to put my sense of self-worth and identity in a way that’s gonna be more positive and nourishing for me than the outcome of my next activity?

Miroslav Volf: Various traditions might have different resources for this question. I, in this book, I answer this question, but with the resources of the Christian tradition, I find Kegar to be the most compelling, not just compelling intellectually, but also, in his ability to express the idea that in my sheer humanity lies more fundamental value of me than in anything that I achieve. And he uses this image, from the gospels. He says at one point in Matthew’s gospel that the lilies in the fields were clad more beautifully and more impressively than Solomon was in all his glory. Okay, so if a lily, who is a lesser creature in complexity than humans, lily, without any adornment is more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory, it means that Solomon without his glory is more glorious than Solomon with glory.

Tom Burnett: Yeah. Yeah.

Miroslav Volf: That the glory of Solomon’s work pales before the glory of Solomon’s sheer humanity, which is to say of each person’s sheer humanity would seem to me that if we discovered something of that sort, that we are at our core, loved, affirmed. That our value, our worth, our dignity, does not depend on whatever it is that we achieve or is undermined by our failures of, of any sort. It’s an amazing sense of freedom that comes as a result of this understanding of who the self then is, how the self is secured in relationship to God rather than in relationship to my own work and how I’m seen by other people. This being seen by other people is where all the trouble, much of the trouble comes, right? And then the sight of me, uh, can be either seen with envy or seeing with, uh, with the desire to kind of pull down. There’s almost an inner look there. Contentiousness. There is a, not just competitiveness, but there’s an enemy in the

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: and gaze that we have toward each other.

Tom Burnett: Yeah. The flowers and, and birds, man, they are not worried. They just do what they do. And I have all these other things I can do. How is it so much worse for me than, than these flowers in my yard? I mean, it’s a good reminder.

Miroslav Volf: And of course of, of course, we are not plants and it’s a, it’s a good thing that we aren’t right. So the question then, does become what kind of, uh, spiritual environment do I as a human need to be planted in so that we can love ourselves with the same unconditional love which we are loved by God.

I think that’s there for those of us who believe in the God of love, but I think it can be there for us and often is there for us in relationship to the other people have to us. And I mentioned to you early on that this, my nanny became for me the image of God, but partly she became because that’s who she was, so that I felt I was always embraced and loved irrespective of who I was. And nothing can rattle this. That’s the beauty of our, I think, humanity that we are capable of relating. To others in those ways capable of receiving this and therefore being established, in this, as those who are worth qua human beings.

Tom Burnett: If we have a sort of an inbuilt, capacity, desire to, to strive, how do we turn that, and what should we focus the striving on rather than being better than somebody else?

Miroslav Volf: So not all competition is, is problematic.

Tom Burnett: yeah.

Miroslav Volf: Even Sir John, that’s very interesting. I think, I think he’s the only one that I’ve read who put it this way. You are supposed to be engaged in something called loving competition. And I think it, it’s possible, but very often it happens with friends. We have friendly games, we go each other on, but celebrate each other’s achievements. We are not diminished. If somebody’s better, that person is better than I am. We rejoice that they’re better than I am. And nonetheless it, it kind of pushes me all the time to, to improve.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: Like that is how I imagine, actually the work of striving, uh, it is possible to rejoice with those who rejoice. It’s sometimes very hard to do that, right? If joy calls my lack of joy in, but if you have these relationships in which the joy of another person is your joy, it is absolutely splendid.

Tom Burnett: Yeah. Right. With the time we have remaining, I wanna turn from your role as an author to your role as a teacher. When I think of places that are saturated with competitiveness and ambition, Yale ranks very highly on my list. And so I wonder, being there for, I think more than two decades, what have you learned from being in that environment, both with your peers and your students?

How have you responded to that sort of intensity of competition and lessons that you’ve implied in your own life and, and try to convey to others?

Miroslav Volf: In some ways, it’s the Yale students who have alerted me to the importance of this issue. The levels of depression, for instance, are fairly high at institutions like Yale. And it’s not very difficult to understand why they were at the top of their high schools. Almost every one of them has come to Yale and suddenly they’re one among 5,000 of equally competent, equally successful students.

And suddenly, if their whole identity was wrapped up, in performance, they find themselves at sea, and I think depression is a kind of malady of self-perceived inadequacy, and it’s no accident that it has become so prevalent, not just in higher learning, but in society at large. because we compete all the time and see ourselves as inadequate. So reflecting just on that situation, and noticing that this is not an issue simply of top performance. It is also there, at other levels. It’s most of our lives. And I thought, oh, let me, lemme see what I can read on this.

And psychological studies who identify this as a, as an issue have, especially in recent years, multiplied. But it’s not a part and parcel of deeper reflection of the nature of humanity. To ask this question, I thought, oh, I better do something like that. Uh, in the meantime, it can serve me as, also, uh, spiritual exercise so I can attend to my own spiritual wellbeing and be less competitive.

Tom Burnett: In response to, to the concerns you were hearing from Yale students, you wound up designing a course in which they could explore these challenges and find better ways to cope, to respond, to grow. Could you tell me a little bit about this course in terms of what some of the key points in someone taking a semester, for instance, to think through these issues of how to live well?

Miroslav Volf: At institutions like Yale, especially pluralistic institutions, as Yale is, we don’t know how to teach students to be humans.

Tom Burnett: Hmm.

Miroslav Volf: This used to be part and parcel of university education, courses on life that’s worth living, but these days, universities have become primarily technical schools. Helping us in getting from point A to point B, and I think that training is really, really important. But what we don’t do, we don’t ask what B is worth getting to why. And the course that we designed is, there in order to ask that question, it’s not how do I act morally? This is not a course in moral education, although morality is involved in it; it’s a course in purposes and it’s a course in nature of my life. What is worth my striving, and how do I determine that? I think students are very hungry for that. Often, they have never thought about why I do what I do. Folks have sent me to school. So I go, but that isn’t quite a sufficient reason why I should study and what I should study to become.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: and so for us, that became one of the keys,

 what has great traditions either secular or religious, spiritual, learning? What do they say about. nature of our humanity and the purpose why we’re here.

Tom Burnett: What have you learned from teaching this course? I imagine you’ve taught it numerous times. Have you grown in some unexpected ways by teaching and, getting feedback and reflecting on that kind of conversation year over year?

Miroslav Volf: One place of learning is, uh, increasing appreciation, for a variety of traditions.

Tom Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Miroslav Volf: Through different traditions, whether that’s secular John Stewart Mill, almost regularly, figures utilitarianism, sometimes Nietzsche figures, but also others like Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. There’s a kind of illumination that comes at the intersections between traditions.

Tom Burnett: I wanna turn back with my last question to where we started with the story of Cain and Abel, this competition, this quest for superiority to outdo each other, seems to be as old as humanity itself.

 Seeing that long history and the violence and pain and suffering that’s resulted, what makes you hopeful about the world in which we live now and looking forward?

Miroslav Volf: It’s true that, uh, striving for superiority as old as humanity.

 My question is, always, and my purpose with the book is not so much to banish completely from the world, striving for superiority. It’s going to be with us, but the question as fundamental question for us is how prominent to let it be.

 I think we find ourselves in a situation in which more than in earlier periods, striving for superiority built into how our major institutions work.

And hence, I think we need to be particularly vigilant, and make sure that we also, in the process of striving, we learn to discover the beauty of our sheer humanity. And so I, I think I want to, suggest, we need certain spiritual disciplines, but also that we have to reform some of our institutions. that the emphasis would be less on striving to be better than others, and more, communally shaped forms of performance and striving for excellence.