Many times it is thought that ambition is a bad thing. Personally, I don't believe this. To the contrary, I firmly believe that ambition is a very good thing for our growth and development. However, we must not confuse ambition with avarice.

Gaby Siller, one of my best friends, as well as one of the people I love most in this life, entered a cross-dressers' contest; the first amateur cross-dresser competition organized by a pro-gay organization called Oasis. Other acquaintances also participated in the same contest. Everyone put forth the utmost effort to win. Some to the point of thinking only of winning. A little before the contest, I chatted with him and said, "Don't think about winning, think about having fun... enjoy the experience from the beginning to the end." And he did so and won.

One year later he once again participated in a transvestite beauty contest organized by a local nightclub. Again, he remembered, "Enjoy the experience...Have fun." And again he won.

For me this is a good example of how ambition and avarice work. Ambition is that sentiment and energy which motivates us to achieve determined goals, both material and spiritual. It gives us the ability to clearly see things, perceiving the obstacles and the opportunities in them. In addition, it helps us to weigh things against each other: characteristics, capabilities and gifts on which we may or may not be able count in order to reach a said goal.

The problem appears when our ambition turns into avarice. In that moment our vision becomes cloudy with the mist of fear and we lose our way.

When you enter a contest, a competition or a career, you do so with the desire to win first place. You train, you prepare, you give it your best, and, if necessary, you give it that extra effort. But when you obsess on attaining first place, in reality you lose sight of the objective of the contest, which is to participate. When you invest all your energies, not in participating and having fun, but in winning at any cost, from that moment you have already lost. And this is valid for all things in life.

It's good to have more money, more possessions, more power, more recognition. But when that which we want to attain becomes the center of our universe, we automatically lose it. For when excessive avarice takes possession of our hearts we feel a schizophrenic fear of losing however much or little we have acquired and of not being able to regain it. And then all our powerful creative energy is absorbed by this same fear.

To Be Rich Toward God is not about renouncing all money and material goods. There are many people who renounce all these things and give their entire life to serving their religion, to the point of forgetting about the rest of the world.

To Be Rich Toward God is about not letting any one thing, including religion itself, become your sole reason for living. It has to do with depending on God, and it's not about anything else. It has to do with trusting in God, and not trusting in anything else. It has to do with not being idolatrous.

To Be Rich Toward God is about competing in the race of life, putting to use all the gifts which God has offered you, and enjoying it until you reach the goal, regardless of what position you occupy.

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Luke 12:13-21 [New International Version]
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.

He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Source:
Soul Food Ministry ~ soulfoodministry.org

Marco Rubio 2006
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