ENVY

As children of God we have been struggling with the questions of Envy and Jealousy for a long time. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, explores what we’ve come to call the 7 Heavenly Virtues. The counterparts of these are the Seven Deadly sins whose classification began with the Desert Fathers, Christian hermits and ascetics around the 3rd century AD in the Egyptian desert.

Long before that time, Moses, after leading his people out of Egypt, chiselled upon the stones the final law against covetousness as the tenth commandment. Joseph, the dreamer, who was sold by his brothers for they were made spiteful by their jealousy of their father, Jacobs, great love for him.

And this scene from Genesis 4:4-5 needs no explanation:

“And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

The Ancient Egyptians themselves lay out grave myths on the dangers of envy as corner stones to their creation myths and royal family history. Their creation story begins with Atum, the first god of creation, springing from the coils of the void. The void being named Apep, the serpent of chaos. When Apep saw that he wasn’t in full possession of all created things in his sea of chaos anymore, he became very angry and envious that anything should be outside of him. He attacked Atum and tried to overcome him, but Atum won the right to put the whole universe in order.

This theme is echoed in the stories of Atum’s sons, and the first Pharaoh of the land of Egypt. The gods Osiris and his brother Set, goes about Set who becomes jealous of Osiris when their father blessed one and not the other. The story is told how in his jealous rage, Set killed his brother.

A blog post by Samuel B. Hislop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints asks this provocative question:

“Why do we feel damaged when somebody else is blessed?”

This loss of trust which causes terrible pain that lie to you and say: God favoured that one, He’ll never favour you.

What is so chilling about envy and jealousy is that they are natural forerunners for ugly malformed pain-centric philosophies. Whether you are jealous of Gods blessings to others, or hysterically jealous of your spouse.

Either way, you can come up with the most outrageous theories and disgusting beliefs that put your inflated pain at the centre of things, and it’s all about you. Envy makes us take hold of the things that don’t make sense to us and fill in the gaps maliciously. Envy is therefore listed one of the seven deadly sins.

What then can we possibly do to protect ourselves from these feelings?

Marcus Aurelius, who was one of the most eloquent Roman Emperors provides the following advice in his work entitled: Meditations:

“Your ability to control your thoughts – treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions – false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.”

One of the greatest parables that Jesus shared which shows some of the dangers of envy is the return of the prodigal son (read Luke 15:11-32).

Analysis:

Yes, the younger son was envious of the wide world and chose to take his inheritance and leave. However, there is another envy which cannot be over looked in the story, which is the elder brothers envy at his father’s reunion with the wayward son. The elder brother is made to feel hurt, and even betrayed by his father. He feels totally cut off from all he thought was good and proper due to his jealousy. He is so scorched by this that his once beloved father seems like a slave owner to him now and he has no feeling of brotherhood with his returned sibling at all. The cloud of jealousy has him and tells him that he is now outcast and unloved, and far from home and the fathers love.

Let’s take a closer look at potential ways that envy may have given false perceptions to the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son.

To be honest, in my own weakness I deeply identify with the elder son’s bitterness not to go join his father’s party. How could he be asked to forget the insults the younger son had laid out; how could the father dismiss so much wrong doing and defilement without any punishment or reprimand at all? Where the rules that he, the elder son, served diligently under for all these years even the fathers’ true rules at all? I can hear the elder brother as clearly as my own heart.

‘Leave me rather in my father’s fields I prefer the company of the grain. I want nothing so ever to do with that party, a celebration for a wicked, weak, foolish, embarrassment. The whole family would have been happier if he never came back.’ Who of us would not be listing our brother’s sins enviously while we sit and throw straw at stones?

The lament could continue: ‘His ignorance allowed him to indulge what my wisdom will not even allow me to entertain. Yet he is celebrated. My father falls on his face to welcome that wretch. He’s not toiled one ounce for what he has squandered, but he receives a fatted calf. He even took lovers as he pleased.”

Could the elder brother not easily be tempted by his wrong perceptions to say, “My father only loves sinners, see how he fawns over my evil brother. I will leave this place too, father give to me my inheritance so that I may go off sinning so that you may favour me also.”

Despairingly the other servants may try to correct his accusation and counter by saying to him, “Please don’t go like this, your father is not celebrating his sinfulness, he is celebrating that he is alive!” Lost inside envy’s tricks all this would do is provoke another recitation of the younger brothers many sins, making it very hard for any to disagree that the younger brother had indeed made many poor choices. This is the boundless blindness of envy. ‘Why should my generosity to others upset you?’ pleads the father.

Christ himself said He’s not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Luke 5:32). That He requires not sacrifice, but mercy (Hosea 6:6). We should never be angry about who our Father chooses to bless.