On Solomon and Society

The psychology within the following extended quote, from Rob Henderson’s book review of, Sadly, Porn, is insightful and timely:

“Two women claim to be the mother of a baby. Solomon is believed to be both wise and powerful. The fake mother believes he is powerful but not wise (otherwise she wouldn’t try to fool him). The real mother believes he is powerful but might not be wise (she is worried the fake mother will fool him).

“After King Solomon declares that the baby would be cut in two, each woman to receive half, the fake mother is pleased. She says that if she can’t have the baby, then neither of them can. But the real mother begs him, ‘Give the baby to her, just don’t kill him!’

“And you know the rest: King Solomon believes her to be the true mother, reasoning that only the real mother would give up her baby to save its life.

“But [author Edward] Teach correctly says that it’s not true that only the real mother would give up her baby to save it. [While] it is true that both women claim to want the baby, only one of them is satisfied by depriving the other—either by taking the baby from her or having it killed. In other words: Getting the baby is not satisfying. Depriving the other woman is satisfying. But she needs a defense against that. ‘Wanting the baby’ is a pretext for depriving the other woman.

“Plus, her defense has an added benefit: Solomon was going to be the one responsible for killing the baby. She’s off the hook. She can say ‘It’s not my fault the baby died, it was caused by…some other omnipotent entity.’

“This is the logic of envy: Getting another to deprive your rivals, while you continue believing yourself to be a good person. Most people want their envy-driven conflicts to be settled by what Teach calls ‘some other omnipotent entity.’ As a result, the only people who have true agency in such a system tend to be [dark personality] types.

“As a kid, I remember teachers would sometimes say ‘It doesn’t matter who started the fight, everyone is responsible.’ Some kids heard that and thought, ‘Okay, I have to avoid fights at all costs.’ Other kids thought, ‘Okay, I can punch anyone in the face and it’s not totally my fault.’

“The former would avoid fights, get beat up, and run to teachers after the fact for help. The latter didn’t care about the rules and would scrap with anyone.

“Because of how we have structured our society and raised kids, Teach claims, most people now feel powerless. They want an omnipotent entity to act for them. Which means only a small number of extreme personality types who have no inhibitions will act on their own.”

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I thought I was done writing on envy after last month’s post. Then I read more of Rob’s book review and made some notes. Here are some thoughts I’ve jotted down:

 

There is no joy in envy, only resentment. Envy thinks, “If I can’t have what you have, then you shouldn’t have it either. If I can’t deprive you of it physically, then I’ll run you down via gossip to others and/or demeaning you to myself.” If we scale up that thought, then not only can one person envy another, so an organization or a nation can envy another.

 

Reading Scripture straight up, it also appears that envy is the motive driving Satan and his minions. If the Evil One cannot have what God has, then it makes sense the betrayer does whatever he can to destroy what rightfully belongs to God. And what might that envy look like today if it were worked out on a grand scale? Maybe the progression is something like this:

 

--Ideologies are subsuming and replacing religion as belief systems and structures.

 

--Collectivism is more powerful than individualism.

 

--Social media facilitates collectivism without individual accountability.

 

--Collectivism takes a belief and goes to scale with it, making those beliefs more powerful.

 

--The collective power center can now help to more fully actualize the belief(s) of the less powerful individual(s).

 

--Entire societies are influenced and shaped by these collective power structures, sometimes to the destruction of what is good, wholesome, and life-giving.

 

--Christian Scripture teaches that demonic influence works behind social structures, including false religions.

 

That said, God’s society for His people is the Church, both universal and local. Its motivations are the complete opposite of how envy works. The local church is where individual Christians are more influential as a collective, and use their resources with the power of the Holy Spirit to bring life to their communities. I hope you’re regularly participating in such a church.

 

Because, as Eugene Peterson says it, the church is, “a colony of heaven in the country of death.”