Though unrestrained consumerism creates an enduring ecology for envy and humanistic psychology just tries to moderate envies excesses Jesus places envyings (plural) in the broken world of self rule and isolated competitiveness—where people cannot find anything in common, fight a lot, are chronically discontented , rage, separate into parties and such like. (Galatians 5:19-21).
Envyings starts off in scripture capturing Cain’s mind and driving him to kill his brother. Then envyings romps right through story after story causing people like King Saul to chase David around, throwing spears at him for a couple of decades, just because “David kills his ten thousands.” Saul loses the Lord God , prayer and praise and ends up the day before he dies pitifully trying to channel Samuel’s spirit through the witch of Endor. The next day Saul, lost within his envyings, falls on his own sword.
The fault line of envy runs from Cain and Abel to Saul and David, through Salieri and Mozart down to the Texas hit man hired by a thirteen year old cheer leader’s mom to kill the mother of a rival cheerleader.
Enviers offer backward intercessory prayers. Not just “Drain his swimming pool O God, but be sure also and flood his basement.” There is a strain of resentment in envy that makes it more sinister than coveting. Coveting wants somebody else’s goods so much we are tempted to steal it. Enviers resent somebody else’s goods so much we are tempted to destroy the goods and the owner. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with somebody else’s goods. The envier has empty hands and therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied.
Active envy reveals a surprising depravity within us- an emptiness that begs for an inside out Spirit directed renovation of our lives that begins by placing Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives. Jesus liberates, purifies and reorders our desiring life. Gratitude slowly becomes a daily habit. Praise finally erupts for the blessings in our hands.
Jesus Christ, the innocent one , became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) . He took Cain’s place as well as Abels. On resurrection morning, when the terrible struggle is over between the old foes, envy and contentment , God will raise together the victims of envy, the ones who have been slain, the ones whose blood has been crying out from the ground for so many centuries, as well as the redeemed perpetrators of envy, into a new creation. Filled with this hope, we declare our rejection of envy and our longing for contentment- now and forever.