Sorting out the right and wrong of ambition

Then the quorum presidency was reorganized, and a bishopric member actually took me aside to explain that I wasn't being made president — indeed, I wasn't in the presidency at all — because the other boys thought I was weird and they had to call as "leaders" people the other boys would "follow."

I couldn't understand why I was so hurt and angry. Unaware of my own career ambition, I had unconsciously expected to be called to a "higher" office because of my good service. I remember complaining to my parents about how ridiculous it was for the adults to choose not the best examples but the most popular kids to lead.

Callings aren't given as rewards, my dad said. The people in authority are simply doing their best to fill positions with the right people, and sometimes they're inspired and sometimes they're not, but it's their stewardship to make those callings to those who they think will do well with them.

Sometimes it's you. Usually it isn't.

It took years, but I finally understood. My ambition should be for the church to grow stronger and better and larger, not for me to grow stronger and better and larger within it. It wasn't about me, it was about the kingdom of God.

To which many readers are saying, "Duh." Well, of course I knew the words when I was young. It took all those years to tame my heart enough to realize how those words applied in my life.

• RIGHTEOUS AMBITION is to be an active part of something greater than yourself, a community of good people doing good.

To be anxiously engaged in a good cause.

It's all there, in plain English. OK, sometimes not so plain, but it's there.

The world rewards selfish ambition — the Competitors, the Dragons, the Careerists. But the Lord honors the ambitious Stewards, the ones who take what they are given and magnify it, with the goal of returning it to the Lord with thanks.

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Orson Scott Card is a writer of nonfiction and fiction, from LDS works to popular fiction. "In the Village" appears Thursdays in the Deseret Morning News. Leave feedback for Card online at www.nauvoo.com/contact_desnews.html.