On September 29th, Mark Driscoll tweeted: “God has bypassed the church pulpit and given his gospel to influencers, politicians, and podcasters, and it’s because most pastors have become useless motivational speakers.”1Pastor Mark Driscoll [@PastorMark], “God has bypassed the church pulpit and given His gospel to influencers, politicians and podcasters, and it’s because most pastors have become useless motivational speakers.,” Tweet, Twitter, September 29, 2025, https://x.com/PastorMark/status/1972712443056152633. That tweet alone might give us justifiable reason to launch Twitter into the sun. However, though the irony is especially thick coming from a man who wrecked his own church, the sentiment is hardly unusual. Many online influencers have taken it upon themselves to condemn real-life churches and pastors, appointing themselves as God’s spokesmen. What is more concerning are the large audiences these men attract. Apparently, many people are interested in what they have to say. But there are also some who have checked out. For these people, influence and platforms are something to be avoided. The specter of Driscoll looms, along with the seemingly endless stream of pastors and leaders who were corrupted by fame and influence. Why not avoid it altogether? After all, Paul said, “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you” (1 Ths. 4:11).
Derek Rishmawy captured this feeling well in a recent article, but he suggests that there has been an overcorrection. He writes: “There is a way of embracing the local, shunning the spotlight, avoiding the lure of Evangelicalism’s celebrityism, platform-obsession, and so on, of cultivating your own garden in hope because you know that God really is in the day of small things (Zech. 4:10). But there is also a way of doing so because you lack hope…. This is not humility. This is faithlessness. This is burying your talent because you have believed hard things about your heavenly Father.”2Derek Rishmawy, “Holy Ambitions, Large and Small,” Mere Orthodoxy, September 2, 2025, https://mereorthodoxy.com/holy-ambitions-large-and-small. As a disclaimer, Rishmawy and most modern people do not mean by ambition what Aquinas means. As we shall see, for Aquinas and other classical authors, ambition is a vice. Rishmawy is obviously using the word in a different sense, free from any sinful connotations.He goes on to ask a poignant question: “Are we operating truly out of a humble desire to be faithful to the call to which he has given us, or out of a fearful sense that he will not back us in anything else?”3Rishmawy, “Holy Ambitions.”
How might we answer that question? Is it possible that you should try to build a bigger platform? By platform, I only mean some position of influence. This broad sense of the word would include a social media following or a podcast, as well as publishing a book or even taking a pastorate. Building a platform would include things we normally think of (like tweeting), but might also include planting a church or getting a PhD to publish or teach. To be clear, this essay cannot answer these questions for you. Every individual is unique, as are the various sorts of platforms you might be interested in building (being a pastor is very different from being a YouTuber!). If you need specific direction, you should talk to your spouse and your pastors. But this essay can provide some categories for self-examination. With some help from Thomas Aquinas, I will name some vices to avoid and a virtue to cultivate: magnanimity. Though platforms are fraught with perils and temptations, shrinking back from the good God has gifted you to do is also vicious. The virtuous life is often quiet, but not always. Sometimes, virtue requires us to attempt great things.
Naming the Usual Suspects: Presumption, Ambition, and Vainglory
Magnanimity, according to Aquinas, must deal with honor, namely, in having a right assessment of oneself and doing the good that lies within one’s power.4Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II.II. Q.129, A1. Here and throughout, I am using the translation by Laurence Shapcote. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I, accessed November 26, 2025. I will return to magnanimity after considering the vices opposed to it. If magnanimity is a golden mean, then on the side of excess Thomas places presumption, ambition, and vainglory. I call these the usual suspects because they are usually quite visible. When you think of someone who has been corrupted by a platform, presumption, ambition, and vainglory probably played some role.
Presumption is the tendency to attempt what is beyond one’s power because of a faulty self-understanding. Aquinas names two ways one might be presumptuous. The first is simply thinking you have more excellence than you really have (like knowledge or virtue). The second is thinking that you are great for reasons that do not make you great (like being rich).5Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 130, A2, ad. 3. It is a good thing to pastor a church (1 Tim. 3:1), but it is presumptuous to insist that you are called by God to do so without the approval of your church, or, worse, against their warnings that you are not gifted or qualified for such work. It is likewise presumptuous for a man to assume that he ought to be an elder because he is a wealthy donor. Many people desire platforms presumptuously. Whether they seek influence in their church or online, they assume that their opinion ought to be heard, but without good reason. Unfortunately, the internet, especially, is all too eager to award an audience to people with no track record of intellectual rigor, ecclesial faithfulness, or personal integrity.
Though ambition does not carry any sinful connotations in most modern usage, Aquinas used the term to refer to an inordinate desire for honor.6Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 131, A1. Honor is a “witnessing to a person’s excellence.”7Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 103, A1. It is not evil to be honored for an excellent quality, but honor must be used properly. The excellence for which a person is honored is a gift from God, so all honor should ultimately be referred to God. Further, excellence is given by God to be used for the benefit of others, so honor must also be used for the good of one’s neighbor.8Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 131, A1.
Based on these observations, Aquinas says that the desire for honor can go astray in three ways. First, when we desire honor for an excellence we do not have, second, when we do not refer the honor we receive toward God, and third, when we crave honor for ourselves without using it for the benefit of our neighbor.9Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 131, A1. Regarding the first error, the issue is not that the person believes they have an excellence they do not actually have; that would be presumption. In this case, they are aware that they do not have an excellence, but they want honor anyway. It is like a student who is so desperate for academic honors that they use AI to summarize books or write portions of their essays; he seeks an honor he knows he has not earned. The other errors are self-centered failures of love.
The common root of all three is a disordered love for honor. An ambitious person will often do what is right so long as it earns them praise, but they simply cannot tolerate obscurity. For example, consider a man who aspires to be a good pastor—surely a noble aim! Good pastors ought to be honored, and it is fine for them to accept such honor, so long as they use it to bring glory to God and point their neighbor toward Him. But what if being a good pastor earns the man criticism rather than honor, as it so often does? For many pastors, these moments reveal that they have not desired to be a good pastor as much as they have desired the honor of being one. Such pastors are guilty of ambition and cannot persevere when their praise dries up. By contrast, the virtuous pastor sees his honor as a tool to honor God and help his congregation. If what is God-honoring and beneficial to the congregation costs him the praise of people, so be it.
Last of all is vainglory. Vainglory, as the name suggests, is the desire for vain glory.10Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 132, A2. It has long been considered a capital vice, meaning it is a fountainhead of other sins and vices.11For the meaning of capital vice, see Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, Second Edition (Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 30–33. Vainglory is easily confused with pride, and the two are often present together.12For Aquinas, pride is the root vice and has a sort of causality over the others, so pride is technically present with all vices. For example, see ST, II.II, Q. 132, A4. Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung helpfully distinguishes the two: “Pride excessively concerns excellence itself (i.e., my excelling others); vainglory, by contrast, concerns primarily the display or manifestation of my excellence… What makes vainglory distinct from pride, then, is love of ‘the show.’… The vainglorious, on the other hand, seek whatever will bring in the most attention and applause, whether it is excellent and deserving or not.”13DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 45. If it was not already obvious that vainglory permeates social media, Aquinas says that the daughters of this vice are disobedience, boastfulness, hypocrisy, contention, obstinacy, discord, and love of novelties.14Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 132, A5.This is surely a serious and common vice!
Again, Aquinas notes multiple ways that the desire for glory can err. First, one may seek glory for something that is unworthy of glory. Second, one may seek glory from a person they should not seek glory from (i.e., a man of poor judgment). Third, one may fail to use his glory to honor God and tend to the spiritual welfare of his neighbor.15Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 132, A1. Whereas the ambitious at least pretends to be something that is genuinely worthy of honor, the vainglorious may accept praise for something that is not worthy of praise from people whose praise should not matter. Examples are not hard to find. We see it in the lengths that people will go to gather an audience online, such as engaging in self-degrading acts. We also see it in what people refuse to do lest they lose their audience, such as refusing to call out radicals in their audience.
To keep up the show, the vainglorious may sacrifice something of their own personality. DeYoung notes the high cost of such a vice: “Tragically, vainglory wins applause and approval at the price of distancing us from others.Relationships cannot flourish when we dupe others or use them as sources of flattery, as a dull background against which we can shine, or as useful props in our reputation-building program.”16DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 59. In other words, the vainglorious man sees his neighbor as a tool—as a way to get more glory. This is obviously degrading for the neighbor, but it also degrades the vainglorious man. Because he relates to others only as tools to earn praise, he is trapped in a performance. He has no identity or personality beyond whatever he thinks will earn praise in the moment. Such a person is incapable of having meaningful relationships or self-understanding.
A Hidden Vice: Pusillanimity
The above vices will likely make one pursue a bigger platform. That rightly makes many of us skeptical not only of others who seem to crave influence, but perhaps even of ourselves. Such skepticism can be wise. These are serious vices, and the online world we live in seems to exacerbate the temptations. But here I want to draw attention to how Aquinas relates these vices to virtue. Humility is certainly an important antidote, but Aquinas does not simply oppose these vices to humility and call it a day. Aquinas opposes these vices to magnanimity, and all as a form of excess. There is another extreme on the other side—an error of deficiency called pusillanimity. By nature, presumption, ambition, and vainglory tend to be very noticeable. When it comes to the vices we associate with platforms, these are the usual suspects. Pusillanimity, by contrast, is often much less noticeable, but this should not lead us to believe that it is any less serious.17Aquinas considers pusillanimity to be a more serious sin that presumption! ST, II.II, Q. 133, A2, ad. 4.
Whereas presumption makes a man attempt that which exceeds his power, pusillanimity makes a man refuse to do what he could, just like the servant who buried the money entrusted to him (Mt. 25:14-30, Lk. 19:11-27).18Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 133, A2. Aquinas names two causes of this vice. One is that someone may be ignorant of his own qualifications; he does not know himself. This, however, is not simply a failure of prudence, but is rather a kind of laziness. A man can know himself and ought to pursue such knowledge.19Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 133, A2, ad. 1. The other cause is the fear of failure.20Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 133, A2. These two cause one to shrink back and play it safe. We may even have spiritual justifications for such an attitude. Why even risk presumption, ambition, or vainglory? Why not live a quiet life and work with one’s hands, as 1 Thessalonians 4:11 commands us? This thinking ignores the fact that the man who wrote 1 Thessalonians travelled great distances to publicly preach the gospel, and lest one say that Paul’s apostolic office made him unique, it is quite obvious that he did not think the missionary movement would stop with him. He entrusted the gospel to men like Timothy and Titus, and he commanded them to entrust the gospel to other faithful men. Some people are called to gain and leverage influence for the sake of the gospel.
Though pusillanimity is easily mistaken for humility, it is often the result of pride. Aquinas says that pusillanimity is caused by pride when “a man clings too much to his own opinion, whereby he thinks himself incompetent for those things for which he is competent.”21Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 133, A1, ad. 3. In other words, it is not humble to refuse to preach when godly people at your church tell you that you have the gift of preaching. It is not humble to avoid research or writing when others have affirmed that you are gifted for such work. It is not humble to avoid the online world when others have said that you could do beneficial work. To be sure, you may have good reasons to avoid any of those things despite what people will tell you. No one is required to do such work (especially not building a social media platform), but let’s not call such refusals humility. There is nothing humble about telling godly, qualified people, “No, you’re all wrong about me, and I am right.” This is the same error as presumption, just the other way around. As Rishmawy noted, it may even reveal that you believe God is a harsh master who will not uphold you in times of temptation and trials.
A Virtue for Platforms: Magnanimity
Each Christian lives in a different context, has different gifts, and is at a different point of sanctification. This being the case, we all need wisdom to know what we should do. Some should not become pastors, some should, and others should, but not right now. The dangers of building a platform are numerous. For many, it will be wise to avoid a platform, at least for now. But it is also possible that many should be speaking or writing, but have falsely reckoned themselves unworthy of the task. This is where magnanimity comes in.
Magnanimity, according to Aquinas, is the “stretching forth of the mind to great things.”22Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 129, A1. Though this may seem opposed to humility, Aquinas shows that this is not so. He says that man has something great as a gift from God and some deficiency as a result of his corrupted nature. Magnanimity considers himself in light of God’s gift, and humility in light of his deficiency. The opposite holds when he considers other people: magnanimity considers their weakness, and humility God’s gift.23Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 129, A3, ad. 4. Magnanimity, then, begins with knowing the truth about yourself. Unlike presumption and pusillanimity, it accurately assesses one’s gifts. The magnanimous person does not presumptuously tend towards works they cannot handle, but they also do not shrink back from things they can. Magananimity shows that lying about ourselves is not virtuous, as though humility requires that we pretend we do not have the gifts God has clearly given us. Pusillanimity goes wrong not because it notices our weakness (it’s right about that), but because it ultimately doubts God’s grace, and there’s nothing virtuous about that.
However, magnanimity is not simply knowing yourself. Magnanimity makes right use of honor.24Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 129, A2, ad. 1. The magnanimous man knows himself to have honorable gifts, but he remembers that these are gifts, and any honor he accrues is ultimately owed to God. The problem with ambition and vainglory is not that honor and glory are bad and that we should not want them. Instead, the problem is that they do not handle honor or glory properly. They turn praise and recognition into ends in themselves rather than instruments by which they may glorify God and make him known to their neighbor.
A magnanimous person does not need praise from other people; he will not compromise truth or righteousness to earn it. But he does great things for God’s glory and his neighbor’s good precisely because he is not swayed by man’s praise or reproach. When he is rightly honored for what he does, he uses that honor to glorify the one who strengthened him for the task. DeYoung writes, “Their achievements genuinely deserve honor and turn our thoughts to the glory of God because they obviously aren’t something anyone could have done without grace. Magnanimous people are luminous, alight with God’s beauty and goodness. Their works draw attention to that glory, a glory that outshines the person and his or her act.”25DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 49.
According to Aquinas, magnanimity is a part of fortitude, so we may find examples of magnanimity wherever we see someone with fortitude.26Aquinas, ST, II.II, Q. 129, A5. Consider Moses as an example. Perhaps Moses was initially pusillanimous, as he shrank back from God’s call (Ex. 3:10-13), but this episode shows us that Moses’ later confidence was not in himself, but in God. Moses left his obscurity in the wilderness and took on the daunting task of opposing Pharaoh to redeem Israel. Hebrews 11:24-26 tells us that Moses rejected the life of pleasure he could have had in Pharaoh’s house and “considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.” Moses even endured reproach from his own people (Ex. 5:20-21). Moses, however, persisted in his task because he sought God’s glory, not man’s. Moses is now all the more glorious precisely because he did not seek glory from sinful people.
Of course, the ultimate exemplar of all virtues is Christ. Throughout his ministry, he was offered worldly glory without a cross, first from the devil (Mt. 4:8-10), then from the crowds (Jn. 6:15), and even from his own disciples (Mt. 16:21-23). Jesus rejected this vain glory and instead sought true glory from his Father (Jn. 8:54). But neither did he shrink back from the daunting task before him (Jn. 18:11). Instead, “for the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hb. 12:2). There is no better example of magnanimity.
Returning to the question of platforms, magnanimity and its opposed vices provide us with some categories for self-assessment.27I remind you that I am using “platform” very broadly to include everything from starting a YouTube channel to pursuing an academic career to pastoring a church. It is good to be critical of your desire to be heard. DeYoung prescribes silence and solitude to combat vainglory because they separate us from the praise of people and teach us to rest in God’s love.28DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 61. Jesus frequently withdrew from the crowds to pray (Lk. 5:16). Many of the great pastors of the early church (such as Gregory the Great) only entered ministry reluctantly, preferring solitude instead. Many of us are uncomfortable with silence and solitude because we are overly desperate to be known and recognized. Though honor is not inherently bad, it should not be something we cannot live without. We should get comfortable with obscurity. It is indeed good to lead a quiet life.
Close relationships are also vital. For one thing, as stated above, vainglory makes meaningful relationships impossible. You cannot build authentic friendships when you treat people as tools to gain applause. Trying to build and maintain friendships will force you to stop putting on a show and be sincere. It will also require you to accept that a real friend may tell you things you do not want to hear. In this way, friendships can guard you against presumption. If you are thinking of pursuing a PhD, starting a blog, or planting a church, what do your closest friends and relatives think? What about your pastor? Self-knowledge is required for wise action here, and we often need help to truly know ourselves.
I must finally add that if we ought to be critical of our desire to be heard, perhaps we should also be critical of our desire to go unnoticed. Suppose you are reasonably sure that you do not have a sinful craving for honor and glory (though, of course, we will always have this to some degree). Suppose that trusted and godly people in your life have recognized some gifting in you. But you can see that the path is difficult, success is not guaranteed, and there is always the risk that you fall sinfully in love with the spotlight, and that makes you want to stay put. Is that the right call? Maybe. You do not have to change the world to be a good Christian. But it is also possible that God wants to use you, and perhaps in ways greater than you could even imagine.
Perhaps God is calling you to be a pastor so that he might use you to bring about a revival in your community. Or perhaps he wants you to write a paper that only ten people will read. That might feel like a failure, but you have no idea how it might influence those ten, and indirectly many more. The point is that if there is some good thing that you could do, then you need to have a good reason not to do it. Otherwise, you may be doubting God. God really does use sinners like you. Sometimes he assigns them difficult tasks, but he also empowers them to do what they never could on their own. He even keeps them from moral failures.
It remains the case that gifts are usually the only indicator that we have to go on. Someone called to be a pastor should demonstrate some gifts for ministry before accepting the call. Otherwise, he’s just presumptuous. However, it is also true that no one is ever fully equipped to pastor. The demands of the calling (and many other callings) are far beyond our strength. That does not mean it’s beyond God’s, and the same God who gives those first gifts when we accept a call will give more grace when the work overwhelms us. Do not bury your talent because you doubt his goodness.
