Envy (Part 2)

My wife and I are Pittsburgh Steelers fans. When the Cowboys or Patriots make a dumb draft pick or run a poor play or stink up the season, a bit of glee comes over us. Something deep and dark inside us quietly goes “Yessssss” at the misfortune of our rival. To give it a name, that something is called envy.

 

After reporting some initial thoughts on envy last month, I’ve continued researching envy for another month. I can no longer hide the news that the lab doors to my heart have blown off. Under the microscope, envy is an ugly parasite and I painfully find it hiding out in the crevices of my psyche. It also looks, at the same time, like envy is endemic to human nature. If you care to take a look…  

 

From Cain’s envy of his sibling Abel to Satan’s envy of his Superior at the end of time, the Bible directly and indirectly refers to envy from Genesis to Revelation. Interestingly, the search engine at the American Psychological Association’s home page has nearly three thousand research references to envy. Turns out the business community encounters envy at the corporate level and pays real money to have studies done to understand the dynamics of it. Their common grace insights are both functionally helpful and convictingly painful. It looks like anytime two or three are gathered, there’s the potential for envy to show up and do its divisive work.

 

To continue building out a working definition of envy from where I landed last month, what follows are some of the better descriptions I’ve come across. The common denominator is the dynamic of fortunes (real or perceived) rising and falling. Those whose fortunes are rising are tempted to pride and self-sufficiency, while those who fortunes are falling are tempted to envy. Please note that one aspect of your life, like finances, might be rising while another aspect of your life, like your marriage, might be falling. The sobering reality is your fortunes can change in an instant any day now. Ready?

 

“In the ledger of envy, your gain isn’t reliably someone’s loss, but their gain is always your loss and your loss is always someone’s gain” (The Last Psychiatrist, via Cambridge scholar Rob Henderson).

 

“An envier doesn’t care whether you have earned part of your success or whether some golden parachute from heaven has dropped straight into your lap. To an envier, your advantage is totally unfair either way. From the dawn of the human race, says Genesis 4, human beings have clashed over their differences—not just their differences of opinion but, much more profoundly, their differences of wealth, status, race, gender, social acceptance, intelligence, physical attractiveness, achievement, and general flourishing. Down the ages, the haves and have-nots keep glaring at each other and grappling over their differences” (Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, p. 159).

 

Dialing the microscope in, here are some finer points on the internal workings of envy:

 

“Envy is always disguised, hardly ever appearing in a straightforward manner. The expressions of envy in social and interpersonal contexts can be extremely subtle and undermining, ranging from discrete spoiling behavior and withholding what a person needs, such as praise, empathy, warmth, attention, admiration, support, or comfort, to actively spoiling or destroying the object” (American Psychological Association, online, May 2005).

 

And now, taking a scalpel and dividing the infected cell, there’s this:

 

“Envy stems from a social comparison with a superior standard. Its two distinct forms are directed at changing this situation in different ways, either by becoming as successful as the envied person (in benign envy) or by lowering the envied person’s advantage (in malicious envy). In essence, envy is thus a social phenomenon” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sept. 2015).

 

Informed with these insights into the inner working of envy, just read through the Gospels and you’ll see envy everywhere. In my observations last month, I pointed out the blatant example of Pilate knowing “that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered Jesus up” (Matthew 27:18). These guys were so possessed with envy that they were looking to also kill the resurrected Lazarus (John 12:9-11). Why? “Because on account of [the resurrected Lazarus] many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus.” The fortunes of Lazarus were ascending, physically and metaphorically, which pointed out Jesus’ superior life and character, while the fortunes of the religious leaders of the day were descending. And the dudes in the descending crowd couldn’t stand it.

 

With an eye toward detailing next month some strategies for fighting against envy, let me now begin to make the turn in that direction. King Solomon helps us when he writes, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot” (Prov. 14:30 ESV). Working toward a tranquil heart is a worthy aim, and there is a way. Ironically, people who get there sometimes provoke others to envy.

 

“While envy is usually associated with material possessions, social status, personal attributes, and professional status and accomplishments, envy can also apply to another person’s capacity to tolerate not having something or managing frustration related to absence and lacking” (American Psychological Association, online, May 2005). In other words, another person’s ascendency is no threat to a tranquil heart, and that kind of internal composure will move observers to wonder how that’s possible and become envious of such tranquility.

 

Because when God’s love for you in Christ is ascending in your heart, you’re on the way to overcoming envy.