That Others May Decrease
the evil of envy
Author’s note: Part 1 of 2 articles on envy written for my denominational magazine, byFaith, slightly re-ordered here. Much thanks to Andy Jones for the kind invitation and for all his editorial help.
There are a number of grievous sins which will swiftly disqualify a minister from church leadership. Envy is not often considered one of them. But Paul lists jealousy right alongside drunkenness and sexual immorality as a mark of walking in darkness (Romans 13:13).
Envy is a vice that leaders can easily tolerate, even nurse, for years, thinking it safe and inconsequential. True, it may slip out occasionally as a whiff of gossip or in a particularly sharp critique during a sermon. But for the most part, envy remains undetected, a poison we imbibe slowly, sometimes with encouragement from others who join us in our hushed gossip or indignant outrage.
We pass around the flask of jealousy, each one taking little nips of bitterness as we discuss the state of the world, or even our own friends and colleagues. We may not literally turn green with envy, but bit by bit, our souls take on a bilious complexion.
Greed operates differently than envy. Greed is the desire to have something God hasn’t chosen to give you. It is the desire to gain. Envy is the desire to see others robbed of what they have. It is the desire for loss, though not your own.
Envying others requires justification. We find ourselves looking for some injustice, some reason things should not be as they are. As the author Angus Wilson notes, all the deadly sins are destructive, but most are at least self-gratifying. In contrast, “envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self-torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.”
Jealousy almost always stems from some hurt or lack that we feel in our own lives. It might be the desire for respect in our field, financial security, better health, or a happy marriage.
When we see others attain the things which we deeply long for, instead of rejoicing at their good, we feel a pang of envy, a desire for things to even out. It’s even worse when such people are personal rivals or enemies because we cannot wait for them to get their comeuppance. We forget what James instructs, that for the Christian, mercy triumphs over judgment.
Envy in Society
Moreover, in today’s society, envy is all around us, part of the air we breathe. It motivates whole political movements as politicians capitalize on the natural resentment that we feel toward other groups and the perceived advantages they receive. It is also part and parcel of consumer-driven capitalism itself. Just when we settle into our easy chair to enjoy the game, an ad screams at us to be discontent with our lives, clothes, car, even our health. We find ourselves more catechized by Madison Avenue than the Scriptures.
Writing in 1977, Henry Fairlie suggested that it is not just our society’s materialism that drives jealousy, but the very idea that if someone else has a talent or pleasure, we should be able to as well, including the most intimate parts of our life:
One of the destructive forms that Envy takes today is the widespread assumption that everyone should be able to do and experience and enjoy everything that everyone else can do and experience and enjoy. We plod through “The Joy of Sex” as if it is the Canadian Air Force Book of Exercises: ‘All together now! One-Two-Three-Four!’…
We are surrounded by young people who think they are artists or poets because they have the right to be artists or poets. They dabble and daub with no talent…. Our societies have supplied no motive for simply doing what they do well, but only the prod of Envy.
While the 1970s may be known as the “‘Me’ Decade,” little has changed in the past 50 years. We think we should be able to have it all, and when we don’t, envy robs us of contentment.
On top of this, we are repeatedly assured by various gurus that if we only work hard enough, we “can do anything we set our minds to,” that time and chance do not happen to all, as Ecclesiastes claims. Fairlie suggests that this leveling impulse impacts our view of vocation:
The unsuccessful man does not envy a duke. He envies the successful man, whom he thinks is otherwise, “just like him,” and whose success he therefore sees as a disgrace to himself…. It is not really for additional material rewards that a man near the top will set his mouth and slit his eyes in order to get even nearer to it still. It is Envy that spurs him. He cannot live contentedly, his talents fittingly employed in some satisfying task, if a colleague rises to a vice-presidency.
Envy is evil because it functions like a thief to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). It doesn’t aim for others to experience abundance but to see them robbed of it. It makes you look at and relate to people in ways God never intended.
Envy as the Root of all (Horizontal) Evil
The Westminster Larger Catechism explicitly lists envy as a sin forbidden by four commandments in the second table – the fifth, sixth, eighth, and ninth. One might ask the question – why didn’t the divines locate envy solely in the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting? While envy and coveting are cousins, they are still quite distinct from one another. Coveting desires the possessions or spouse of another, wanting them for one’s own. Envy is more insidious – and more hateful – than that.
Envy convinces us that we are not so crass as to fancy those things for ourselves. All we are doing is pointing out facts: “Roger clearly did not deserve that kind of pay raise, or Maggie that sort of husband. And we know Pastor Billy just lucked into that pulpit. It was only because of his connections, not his gifts or education, obviously.”
We do not necessarily wish that we would have all those things – only that our neighbor would not. Envy is petty and spiteful, small of soul.
After pride, envy may well be the root vice that drives all the others. If pride is rebellion against God, thus breaking the first Great Commandment, then envy violates the second, failing to love our neighbors as ourselves. Pride sins vertically; envy sins horizontally.
We may be sincerely devoted to God, growing steadily in faith and love. But when we balk at the good our neighbors enjoy, that envy betrays an ongoing worldliness; we are still looking at earthly things, rather than things above.
Perhaps it should not surprise us, then, that in the Scriptures, envy often occurs in the context of religious devotion within the covenant community. The first murder stemmed from religious envy – Cain murdering Abel for the favor Abel found with God. Later in Genesis, Joseph’s own brothers plotted to kill him out of jealousy. The Gospel writers tell us plainly that the Sanhedrin delivered Jesus over to death “out of envy” (Matthew 27:18). Envy is no less potent in a religious context than a worldly one – and in fact, it can be far more insidious and brutal.
For us, we might not begrudge our fellow church members their houses or careers, but rather the favor they appear to find with God. We may envy their spiritual gifts, calling, or even their holiness – that the fruit of the Spirit seems to come so much easier to them than to us. We wonder what’s wrong with us, and thus despise them for it, even though they’ve done nothing wrong.
As C.S. Lewis points out in “Mere Christianity,” we may even resent a humble person’s humility, because they seem to enjoy life so easily. Religious envy is the vice of intense people, those who take themselves and their own spiritual “success” far too seriously.
The Bible makes a big deal of envy because the call of the Christian leader is to care for others. We need the Spirit’s help to see how it lingers in our hearts and warps our relationship with others. By God’s grace, we can see envy replaced with a genuine delight in the welfare and prosperity of others.
Chris Hutchinson is Pastor of Word and Prayer at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Blacksburg, Virginia, and the author of Rediscovering Humility: Why the Way Up is Down.
Excellent article on a subject that’s been far too neglected. It’s subtle and can be hidden far too easily. The connection to greed smacked me upside the head. Thank you.