Envy

As I'm contemplating how to write about envy, I find that the thoughts slip away quickly.  Volumes have been written about the "obvious" sins: pride, idolatry, speaking wrongly and falsely about others, not trusting in the sovereignty of God.  But envy?  It's a sin I can't seem to keep focused on, a sin like fog that hovers and is gone again.  It's something I believe I have a real issue with, and I know I'm not alone.  But why do I say "believe"?  Am I not convinced?  No, for envy is the one sin we feel we are justified in harboring, because of what we think we are entitled to.

Facing Envy

I've been reading Bob Sorge's book Envy: The Enemy Within, which dares to face this sin head on.  It's a book that you can read, or it's a book that can read you.  He describes envy as "the feeling of displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage of prosperity of others."  He goes on to compare it to jealousy, and says that the differences are negligable, but I will disagree.  Jealousy is wanting something for your own; envy is wanting something for your own by taking it away from someone else.  While jealousy can and usually does have its root in something righteous - God's jeaousy for His people, a husband's jeaously for his wife - envy cannot ever be rightous, cannot ever be right or good or give glory to God.  So why do we dwell in it?

John Calvin says that the human heart is an idol factory.  The highest idol of all is the idol of self.  We care for ourselves and tend to our needs, fulfilling every demand that we make of ourselves, every request and desire.  There's no one I serve more than me!  Sometimes I wonder, as I grab yet another latte, how things would be different if every time I wanted to serve myself, I served another?  The thought is usually only a thought; it doesn't take root, and drifts away.  But that is what it means to love others as ourselves.

Talents

Envy is everywhere, and Sorge aims to reveal its appearance and destructiveness in the church.  Using the example of the worship team which, he remarks, is the place of ministry where gifts are most able to be measured on a scale, he paints the example, derived from the parable of the talents, of the one-talent musicians, and the two-talent musician who arrives saying in his heart, "I have two talents!  Let me lead!"  Naturally shot to the head of the team, the two-talent musician grows and fosters the ministry, until the five-talent musician comes along.  "Then one Sunday morning it happens.  In the back door comes...5 talents!  You're thinking to yourself, Go back to the pit from which thou didst crawl!  You are shocked at the host of emotions that rise up within you as you stare at this 5-talent wonder.  You know that if that woman with the 5 talents joins the worship ministry, her giftings will naturally make a way for herself, she will eventually be placed in charge of the worship ministry, and she will become the new savior of the worship team.  You will be forgotten in the shadow of her exceptional giftings and wonderful spirit."  He notes that the two-talent musician, upon arriving to the one-talent team, thinks, "Move over.  I'm here now.  Things are going to be a little different around here."  But in the presence of the five-talent musician, he rears up in offense, wanting this stellar party to leave before they take away what he has.  It is, as Sorge notes, "The dynamics of Ecclesiastes 4:4: 'Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.'"

What's In Our Hearts

Sorge lays hold of a truth in this sentence: "When someone next to you is promoted, you suddenly discover the true nature of your friendship."  Because all is well when we toil and work with another, or within a group, but when one is singled out for promotion..?  Man...watch out!  Especially when one is given the promotion to a position we had our eyes on, and were pouring ourselves out to achieve.  But does the fault lay with the one promoted?  It really doesn't.  Does the responsibility lay on God?  Is it a defiency of our own heart?  Both: the Lord is the one to promote or demote, to raise up kings or destroy nations, to give measures of grace according to His own good will; in seeking our own ambitions first, we set up expectations in our hearts that may not necessarily be met, expectations based on what we feel we are entitled to.  But God has that final say, and when it is not us chosen...it's devastating.  And a whole forest of emotions and thoughts burn with unwieldy fire inside us, reducing us to hatred, sin, backwards steps.  Dust and ashes.

Envy is dark because its fuel is our own ambition.  Perhaps at the root of other sin we can admit that it is bad for us.  But at the root of envy we can only admit, "But that should've been me."

It takes someone truly surrendered to God's plan and purpose to be Ok with being overlooked.  It is by humility and the grace of God that would bring us to say, "What I think is right for my life doesn't matter.  It's what You know is right for my life that matters."

The Stumbling Block of Generosity

Jesus addressed this in the parable of the workers:

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”

We often read this - as we should - as an analogy about the Kingdom of God, and how whomever the Lord choose will be brought to Him regardless what stage of life they are in.  But what about reading this literally?  What about actually being in this situation?  What about being the one who had labored from sunrise, believing that they would receive the greater pay at the end of the day, only to see those who came in later receive the same recognition, placement, and elevation?  How does a heart respond to that?  The master of the story is right: it is generosity.  But who is able to see past their own offense to understand and be at peace with what the master did?  How many of those workers went home that day offended, and let it turn into animosity, and let that turn into bitterness, which would consume their souls?  Maybe they quit working for the master, and found themselves stuck, stifled, and distant from the work they took pride in, unwilling to connect anymore to their coworker friends, their generous master.  Who of the late-in-the-day workers, happy with their gifts, knew that the early laborers were sick with offense and despair?  The late workers were glad the situation was "unfair"; the early workers were inflamed that the situation was "unfair."

It's envy.  "They don't deserve it, I do."  And it's deadly.  And it infiltrates the heart and the mind, a subtle hand upon the wrist that ever so gently tugs, and tugs, and tugs, until you find yourself far away in a lost, distant place, brooding alone.  How can we repent for a sin we don't know is sin?  How can we turn from something we are convinced is so right, taking our rightful place according to how lofty we believe ourselves to be?  How can we rid ourselves of a Cain heart before our brothers are slaughtered at our hands?

I mostly just read this book because I did not want this book to read me.  Because I've been there: two-talents glaring at five, seeing the substance of my own relationships after promotion, an early laborer offended at generosity.  It's deep.  It's not much addressed in the church.  It's silent.  And it's killing us and curtailing the fullness of God's ministries.

The cure?  Repentance, repentance, repentance.  Every minute that emotion flashes in the gut, repentance.  Looking to Him, from Whom all things are given.  Understanding His sovereignty.  Being Ok with what He has for us.  Delighting in His will for others.

Check the heart.  It's an idol factory.