Many Christians aim too low. We mistake humility for passivity and meekness with mediocrity, thinking God wants us to suppress all ambition. In doing so, we turn losing into a kind of twisted Christian virtue. We call it humility, but really, it’s just unbelief. God never called His people to be beautiful losers. He called us to reign with Christ.To seek glory, honor, and immortality is to seek what God Himself promises to the faithful.The Bible’s vision of humanity is larger and more dignified than the self-loathing — the false humility that passes for spirituality today. The Christian life was never meant to be small. Redeemed men and women are not required to limp through life. Rather, He made us for glory.Consider Paul’s words in Romans 2:6-8: "He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life."For a long time, I’d come to this verse in my Bible reading plan, and it struck me as odd. Paul can’t be saying we are saved by seeking glory and honor, since the whole book of Romans teaches the opposite. We are saved by grace, not works. So what is Paul saying?Here’s my answer in a nutshell that I’ll develop below:God originally created man to pursue glory, honor, and immortality through faithful obedience and exercising dominion over creation. Since Adam sinned, he “fell short” of this glory. But Christ, the second Adam, succeeded where Adam failed and restored man to his original purpose. Therefore, redeemed Christians are now free to pursue glory and honor by faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit, exercising godly dominion for the glory of God.Adam's lost gloryTo understand Paul’s statement in Romans 2:6-10, let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2 teaches that there were two trees in the garden: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was permitted to eat from the first tree but forbidden to eat from the second.When Adam sinned, the verdict was exile. “[God] drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24).The trees represented two possible destinies: glory or death. Had Adam persevered in obedience, he would have eaten from the tree of life and entered into immortality. Instead, he reached for forbidden knowledge and fell under the curse of death.Though Adam was created in innocence, he was not yet as glorious as he could have become. God gave him a gloriously ambitious task to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and take dominion” (Genesis 1:28). That’s a global ambition. Adam’s task was to take the wild and untamed world outside of Eden and bring it under subjection to him. In other words, God created Adam with an eschatology — a purpose, telos, or end — that he might rise from innocence to glory through faithful obedience.To fulfill God’s command, Adam would need to develop various skills he wasn’t created with. He would have needed to learn to plant gardens, name animals, lead a wife, and raise children. Those latent potentialities would have been drawn out of him through experience over time.In other words, though Adam was morally innocent, he was not yet as glorious as he would have become had he been faithful to God’s commands. He could have attained glory by becoming a more skilled and excellent man in the pursuit of glorious goals. In so doing, Adam would have grown intellectually, physically, spiritually. Christ succeeded where Adam failed. And the result of Christ’s obedience was glory.In other words, innocence was the starting line, glory was the finish line.With this in mind, notice Paul’s famous description of sin as not merely “doing bad things” but falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That’s important. Sin is more than merely breaking the rules; it is the forfeiture of glory. Because of Adam’s sin, he was no longer able to attain the glory God made him for. He “fell short of the glory of God.” And humanity has been falling short ever since.Christ, the second Adam, attains the glory of GodBut the story doesn’t end in failure. Scripture presents Christ as the “last Adam” who succeeded where the first Adam failed. In His human nature, Christ sinlessly retraced Adam’s path.The author of Hebrews (quoting Psalm 8) draws this out explicitly:What is man, that you are mindful of him,or the son of man, that you care for him?You made him for a little while lower than the angels;you have crowned him with glory and honor,putting everything in subjection under his feet. (Hebrews 2:6-8)Notice Hebrews 2 and Romans 2 both use the same word pair: “glory” and “honor.” The author or Hebrews 2 is citing Psalm 8, which is a commentary on Genesis 1–2. In other words, these texts tie together the creation of man, the image of God, and the dominion mandate.Hebrews 2 also connects the creation of Adam with the incarnation of Christ, who was likewise crowned with glory and honor. And through His suffering and death, Christ brought “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). Thus, Christ succeeded where Adam failed. And the result of Christ’s obedience was glory. Jesus said it Himself: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:26).Therefore, Jesus hit the reset button on the human story. Adam’s sin broke the circuit of glory, but Christ reconnected it. Jesus secured the glory that Adam lost and offers it freely to His people. He restores humanity to its intended place as rulers over creation, crowned with glory and honor, who must once again revisit the dominion mandate given to Adam. Thus, Christ completed the redemption arc of humanity. The fullest Christian life will not be marked by mediocrity but glory. And our savior will reward his faithful servants who pursue it. Through Christ, obedience is glorious again.Redeemed humanity restored to the pursuit of gloryThis brings us back to Romans 2:6-7. When Paul says that God “will render to each one according to his works,” he isn’t teaching salvation by merit. He’s describing the reward of faith — the fruit of a life transformed by grace. Those who “seek for glory and honor and immortality” are not grasping for self-exaltation; they’re following the path of Christ, the second Adam, who entered glory through obedience.Christians are to do all things to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) while also hoping in glory as our inheritance (Romans 5:2). Those united to Him by faith are once again free to pursue what Adam forfeited.God is ambitious. The creation mandate is ambitious (Genesis 1:28). The great commission is ambitious (Matthew 28:18-20). These ambitions are global in scale and and can only be accomplished by Spirit-filled men and women who dare attempt great things for God. Thus, redeemed Christians are likewise made to pursue great and glorious ambitions.Christians who, therefore, think small, equating humility with mediocrity, are settling for less than what God made them for. God intends His people to exercise dominion under Christ’s authority — to build, teach, create, and govern. To seek glory, honor, and immortality is to seek what God Himself promises to the faithful.Glory is not a zero-sum gamePerhaps you may find it surprising to hear that when we obey God, giving God the glory, there is also a glory that overflows back to us. But it does. God’s glory is not a zero-sum game. Take David’s victory over Goliath, for example. Who gets the glory for that? That’s actually a trick question. David could have stayed home that day, tending his sheep, playing it safe, and keeping his hands clean. If he’d stayed home, he would have remained innocent, but he would not have received glory.RELATED: How 'loser theology' is poisoning the church Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty ImagesInnocence isn’t the same as glory. One can remain innocent while doing nothing. Glory requires risk, faith, and obedience. When David stepped onto that battlefield, he was seizing the opportunity to magnify God through courage. That’s why we know his name. King David is on the Mount Rushmore of the Christian faith because he didn’t stay home. We know his name because he courageously rushed into battle.In the defeat of Goliath, God gets the glory, but David also shares in it. That’s because God’s glory is not a zero-sum game — it is expansive. The more we glorify God, the more His glory spills over onto those who take courageous action by faith.When some Christians feel satisfaction for succeeding at a great task, they might feel a little guilty for enjoying it. They might wonder if it’s pride or selfish ambition. That’s certainly possible, but it’s also possible that they’re merely enjoying an echo of glory in their achievement.Rather than allowing the fear of pride to smother the glory we’re meant to enjoy, it is better to pursue glory while repenting of any pride that we see arising within us. Better to repent of sin while pursuing great things than to bury your talents and avoid the risk.Greater ambition, greater gloryThis matters because glory can be a powerful motivator for faithful Christians to pursue ambitious goals. The greater the ambition, the greater the glory when it is accomplished.Put another way, glory scales with ambition. The kid who wins a backyard football game may feel a taste of glory, but the man who wins a Super Bowl ring experiences it in full. This same pattern applies to life in God’s kingdom: the greater the goal, the greater the glory. Glory is out on the battlefield, not at home on your couch.There’s glory in raising faithful children, mastering your craft, building a business that blesses others, and serving others with excellence. Christians should be the most competent, disciplined, and creative people in the world. Why shouldn’t we be? We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, sent on a divine mission, and commanded to take dominion. That means aiming high — not low.Aim higherSince many Christians don’t think this way, they end up aiming too low. They pray, go to church, pay a tithe, read their Bible, and stay out of trouble, thinking that’s the fullness of the Christian life. None of those things are wrong, but they’re not glorious either. Innocence is where the journey begins, but glory is where we should end up.So if there’s a promotion offered at work, go for it. If you’ve got a business idea, build it. If you’re presented with a leadership opportunity, take it. Godly Christians should make the best business owners and bosses in the world, should they not?Pursue excellence in your vocation such that you will be a blessing to others. That’s what practical dominion taking looks like.God has given you gifts and opportunities. The question is: What will you do with them? Will you aim low out of false humility? Or will you seek glory, by faith? We were never meant to limp through life as losers or apologize for our successes. God crowned us with glory and honor and set us loose in His world. So don’t smother your ambition under the guise of humility. God doesn’t call us to be beautiful losers. He called us to reign with Christ. So aim higher. Pursue greatness for the glory of God. And when you succeed, give Him the glory and enjoy the reciprocal glory He delights to share with you. May your pursuit of glory lead you upward, outward, expanding, and fruitful.This essay was adapted from an article published at Michael Clary's Substack.

An internal memo has rocked the leadership at the British Broadcasting Corporation.Last week, another outlet in the United Kingdom revealed that the memo had accused the BBC of deceptively editing footage of President Donald Trump's speech on January 6, 2021.'We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country any more.'The Telegraph reported that Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, wrote a dossier on the BBC's alleged bias before leaving his position in June.The report accused the BBC of splicing together Trump's comments on Jan. 6 to appear as if they were made in the same breath, even though the remarks were about 54 minutes apart.As Blaze News previously reported, the edit in question appeared on the BBC's one-hour Panorama special, titled "Trump: A Second Chance?"The documentary featured a clip purporting to show Trump saying, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."In reality, Trump's actual statement was:"We're gonna walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're gonna walk down. We're gonna walk down, any one you want, but I think right here, we're gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated. Lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."The edited clip also featured Trump's words from about 54 minutes later, when he was discussing election integrity."Most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the evening and say, 'I wanna thank you very much,' and they go off to some other life, but I said something's wrong here, something's really wrong, can't have happened, and we fight.""We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country any more," Trump added.Now, BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness have both handed in their resignations.RELATED: BBC allegedly deceptively edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech into riot lie Tim DAvie. Photo by Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images Davie issued a memo to his staff on Saturday and claimed that it was completely his decision to step down."I wanted to let you know that I have decided to leave the BBC after 20 years. This is entirely my decision," Davie wrote, according to the Hollywood Reporter.The director said he had been reflecting on the "very intense personal and professional demands" that come with his role and claimed that "in these increasingly polarized times, the BBC is of unique value and speaks to the very best of us."Without directly mentioning the video editing controversy, Davie called the BBC a "critical ingredient of a healthy society."'As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.'Turness, however, was openly self-deprecating in her decision to resign."The ongoing controversy around the Panorama on President Trump has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love," she wrote in a memo. "As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me — and I took the decision to offer my resignation to the Director-General last night."She added that "in public life, leaders" must be "fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down."Still, Turness said despite the mistakes, any "allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong."RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ. CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness, October 13, 2022 in London, England. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images As the BBC is a government-run institution, the ruling Labour Party chimed in on the controversy."I want to thank Tim Davie for his service to public service broadcasting over many years. He has led the BBC through a period of significant change and helped the organization to grip the challenges it has faced in recent years," said U.K. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.Nandy said the BBC charter, which defines "Object, Mission and Public Purposes" for the organization, will be reviewed to help the BBC "adapt to this new era" and secure its role at the "heart of national life" for the future.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

News broke last week that Harvard University — that ancient temple of American prestige and intersectional pride — may finally attempt to curb its notorious grade inflation. For decades, Harvard has handed out A’s like party favors at a preschool graduation. But now, administrators seem to fear the public has noticed that every graduate’s transcript reads: Congratulations! You’re brilliant.Naturally, the students have responded with calm reflection and humility.The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.Just kidding. They’re in full moral meltdown — which is remarkable, since most of them deny morality exists unless it’s part of an identity rubric. Touch their grades, though, and suddenly they rediscover absolute truth, glowing with divine fire.What provoked this crisis of the soul? The rumor — merely the rumor — that they might have to study.One distraught undergraduate complained that stricter grading would force students to spend time on academics instead of extracurriculars. And as every Harvard student knows, college is all about extracurriculars. Academics are a high-school hazing ritual — a price of entry to the elite club where you never have to study again.Other students reportedly spent the day crying. It’s a hard life.When they lamented losing time for extracurriculars, some surely meant yachting. Others meant activism. Who will dismantle “colonizing heteronormativity” if the revolution has to pause for midterms? Who will liberate the oppressed from the tyranny of citations?Their outrage, ridiculous as it sounds, reveals at least three uncomfortable truths about the American university system — and the students it produces.1. They worked hard once so they never have to again.Some students said they nearly killed themselves to get into Harvard. Not to study there — don’t be ridiculous! — but to ensure that they’d never need to study again.If you’re an employer expecting a Harvard graduate to be a disciplined thinker, brace yourself. You may be hiring someone who hasn’t cracked a book in years. Many of them majored in activism and minored in demanding that you pay them to keep doing it.These students treat the workplace as an extension of campus — a new platform for “advocacy,” complete with your office space, Slack channels, and HR department. You wanted an employee. You may get an organizer.2. Entitlement isn’t an accident — it’s the admissions policy.Harvard attracts a particular type: students convinced that excellence is their birthright and that hard work is a microaggression.Some even claim that “work ethic” must be decolonized as a relic of whiteness — a fragile idea until you remember they say it while demanding an A for not working. One almost admires the nerve.We should stop treating “Harvard graduate” as a compliment. It’s becoming a warning label. These students expect to skip effort, skip merit, skip discipline — and demand that you “check your privilege” if you object.Why wouldn’t they? Harvard built an entire institutional culture around their sensitivities. The modern university no longer shapes students; it rearranges itself around their demands.3. The university system has failed.The Harvard meltdown exposes a national rot. For decades, Americans have been told that college is essential for success. Universities responded by expanding enrollment, inventing dozens of useless “studies” degrees, building administrative empires, and raising tuition to swallow every loan dollar available.The result?Now we’re mass-producing indebted graduates with inflated expectations of high-paying careers and no knowledge or skills to justify either. Education has become a luxury accessory — a handbag whose value lies in the logo.To test the system’s bankruptcy, try asking a recent Ivy League graduate:What is wisdom?What is the highest good?How did your education make you a more virtuous person?You’ll likely get a breathless word salad about “advocating for marginalized identities and dismantling structures of oppression.” Ask how that helps anyone achieve the good, and you’ll get a vacant stare fit for a zoning map.Of course, technical fields like engineering still demand real work. But those are small islands in a vast sea of bureaucratic waste. Most universities now operate as billion-dollar community centers with a few classes on the side — entertainment disguised as education.RELATED: The real fraud in higher ed: Universities need that Chinese money Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty ImagesCan the system be saved?Maybe, but don’t bet on it.You can’t “hire your way out” of a faculty that’s 97% left or far left. That’s not an imbalance; it’s a monoculture. And monocultures don’t reform themselves.But the reckoning is coming. Enrollment is falling, budgets are exploding, and public trust is collapsing. The only thing keeping many universities alive is their ability to convince students that identity activism and LGBTQ+ advocacy are transcendent educational callings.The solution is simple: Stop paying for the nonsense. No one is obliged to spend $80,000 a year to hear a gender-theory lecturer attack the biblical definition of marriage. No law, moral or otherwise, requires funding your own indoctrination.Let them lecture to empty rooms.The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.And the report card is long overdue.

Liberals have made no secret of their desire to see harm come to President Donald Trump.A survey conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University's Social Perception Lab revealed in April that 55% of respondents who identified as left of center said that assassinating Trump would be at least somewhat justified.When asked by pollsters about the September 2024 attempt on the president's life at his golf course in Florida, 28% of Democrats said it would have been better for Trump to have been slaughtered on the green.This murderous loathing for the president leached into popular culture long before Democrats rushed to mock Trump's brush with death last year in Butler, Pennsylvania. For instance, a theater production simulated his assassination in New York City and an aspiring D-list comedian posed with a fake decapitated head made to look like the president.A masked London-born agitpropist who calls himself Mason Storm recently contributed to this unhinged anti-Trump genre with a hyper-realistic, life-size sculpture of the president dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and set on a cross-shaped gurney in a cruciform pose. The sculpture, which is titled "The Saint or the Sinner," depicts Trump as incapacitated with the implication — made explicit elsewhere — that he is dead as the result of a lethal injection.According to a statement shared online by Storm, "In a world increasingly driven by polarized narratives, this work offers a moment of reflection, urging us to take responsibility — and to realize that every decision tells a story."RELATED: Evil unchecked always spreads — and Democrats are proof Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP via Getty ImagesWhile the title of the sculpture and the corresponding statement from Storm suggest there's an ambiguity about the work's meaning, Storm made clear online his antipathy toward Trump, writing, for instance, "He's not the messiah he's a very naughty boy!"'Simply deviant.'The sculpture, which was shown earlier this year in Vienna, was also going to be shown at the central train station in Basel, Switzerland; however, Gleis 4, the gallery responsible for the planned pop-up, called it off, citing "expected large crowds and feared disturbances."On Saturday, Gleis 4 reportedly installed the sculpture in a showcase window on Kunstmeile, an indoor pedestrian walkway in downtown Basel.According to France24, the sculpture has been purchased by an "internationally renowned figure living in Europe" whose identity will remain confidential.Bishop Hermann Glettler of the Diocese of Innsbruck has called the sculpture "simply deviant."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

If you read the label on your favorite "healthy" food, the chances are high that you’re going to be extremely disappointed — and maybe even inspired to make a massive change.And that’s exactly what happened when Christian homesteader Michelle Visser took a harder look at what she was putting in her body.“I had been a junk food junkie my whole life, and I had been eating processed food my whole life,” Visser tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.“I started looking at the ingredients of the processed food, and I started realizing, well, instead of using this little pack of taco seasoning, I could make my own taco seasoning. And instead of buying this ice cream that has antifreeze as one of its ingredients, I could make my own ice cream,” Visser explains.“What differences did you see in your own body and in the health of your family when you started making those changes?” Stuckey asks.“So much more energy and just zest for life and a really good feeling about food that I had never had before,” she responds, telling Stuckey that the difference between opening up a cardboard box and making your own food from scratch is staggering.“It just doesn’t give you the satisfaction and the creativity that real food can give you,” she says. “So I started feeling much better in that way. Just more energy, sleeping better, just really good overall.”Stuckey points out that in many cases, removing processed foods from diets does alleviate a lot of chronic symptoms people may have had.“It’s not just one quick fix, but you know, a lot of the things that people in America struggle with today, when it comes to our gut, when it comes to our skin, a lot of the things that start with our digestion, they can be alleviated, or helped a lot, by what we do in the kitchen,” Stuckey says.And Visser has some shocking news for those who believe they’re being healthy by drinking tea every night.“It turns out it’s one of the most heavily unregulated, yet heavily sprayed with pesticide food or drink that you can eat,” she tells Stuckey, explaining that even when the tea is “organic,” it may come in a toxic bleached bag.“So maybe loose leaf tea is the way to go,” Stuckey says.“That’s what I recommend,” Visser agrees.Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.