Subject — Envy
Theme — Collective Envy
Proposition — An examination of institutionalized envy in a culture will help us to understand why Proverbs 27:4 suggests that envy is something that is nigh unto impossible to stand up against.
Purpose — Therefore having looked at collective envy let us seek, by God’s grace, to not be swept up and be participants in this collective envy.
Introduction
We moved to this question of envy because of how it is connected to the sin of murder as mentioned by the Heidelberg catechism.
Question 106. But this commandment seems only to speak of murder?
Answer: In forbidding murder, God teaches us, that he abhors the causes thereof, such as envy, (a) hatred, (b) anger, (c) and desire of revenge; and that he accounts all these as murder. (d)
We pretty much understand hatred, anger, and the desire for revenge but it is my conviction that we don’t really understand envy, and that because it is in the air we breath, culturally speaking.
Last week we set the table for our discussion on envy. We considered some significant Scriptures that teach on envy. We briefly traced out how envy has been spoken about by some of the Early Church Fathers. And we spoke about envy on a personal and individual basis. And then concluded by looking at some solutions to envy.
As we continue now this week we return to the definition that we gave for envy.
Definition of Envy — Envy is the sin of jealousy over the blessings, prosperity, character, and achievements of others, but more than jealousy it is the positive anguish over the good of others and joy at the anguish and misery of others even if that anguish and misery does the envious no discernible positive good. While being indignant might find its roots in the injustice of the well being of evil persons, envy finds its roots in the happiness of good people. In brief envy is pain at the good in others, and it is most commonly found in those whom wish to lower others, even if that lowering of others does not mean that they will rise.
Well we can understand why God says in Proverbs that it is a rottenness to the bones.
Envy is wounded by our neighbors prosperity. Envy finds pleasure in the ruin or harm of those of whom we are envious. Envy is sickened at hearing praises of those of whom are envied and recoils at the virtues of those upon whom our envy is pointed. And the irony, which we will explore more next week, is that envy only grows more intense the more it is assuaged by those who are being envied. That is to say, that should the envied seek to practice charity towards the envious, with thoughts of reducing their reasons to be envious, the envious envy them all the more because of the their own sense that as being inferiors they had to be assisted by those they believe to be their superiors. The envious hate those who help them because it confirms, in their minds, their lower position. If the envious receive favor from the fortunate the envious suffers even more and the envy grows because the one in the favored position has the power to dispense favor while the envied does not. Envy is not concerned so much with reaching the happiness of others as it is in making everyone as miserable as the envious. Envy is complicated by the fact that it is slow to be self-diagnosed or confessed because of the shame involved in this vice.
Schadenfreude — taking joy or delight in another person’s misfortune.
What we want to ask this morning is what does envy look like when it becomes the norm among a people group and becomes institutionalized among a people and their culture.
Proverbs 27:4 asks rhetorically, “Who is able to stand before envy?”
This morning we want to see why the writer of proverbs views envy as being such a fearsome enemy.
And indeed Envy is a fearsome enemy. In Scripture we find envy stirred up against godliness in others
Daniel 6:3-5 Then this Daniel distinguished himself above the governors and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king gave thought to setting him over the whole realm. 4 So the governors and satraps sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find no charge or fault, because he was faithful; nor was there any error or fault found in him. 5 Then these men said, “We shall not find any charge against this Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God.”
Envy stirred up against prosperity of others
Ps. 73:3 For I was envious of the boastful,
When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Envy stirred up against who are favored / successful
I Samuel 18:6 Now it had happened as they were coming home, when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women had come out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with musical instruments. 7 So the women sang as they danced, and said:
“Saul has slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands.”
8 Then Saul was very angry, and the saying displeased him; and he said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed only thousands. Now what more can he have but the kingdom?” 9 So Saul eyed David from that day forward.
And so Proverbs 27:4 asks “Who can stand before envy,” and in the last few examples of envy we saw how it can work on a basis of a individual against another individual but we want to probe this morning what it looks like as a collective culture operates with envy as a foundational starting point for the culture. Surely, if Proverbs 27:4 is correct that envy is a powerful enemy on a personal basis how much more so if envy becomes part of the bowels of a culture?
Organized cultural envy produces two children that we are going to consider this morning. These two children, if nurtured by the allowance of envy to proliferate and spread end up going a long way towards creating a anti-Christian mindset among all who are members of the culture.
I.) Egalitarianism as one offspring of Envy
Since envy is concerned with bringing the successful, prosperous, and superior person down, the long range effect of envy on a culture as a whole is to produce a culture where all are equal — equal in the sense of nobody being allowed to distinguish themselves by way of ability.
A Envious culture will set cultural wide norms that are not to be exceeded. There will be a kind of cultural coercion toward mediocrity and the mediocre will be increasingly defined downward.
This most often reveals itself via the move to insure that all think alike, that all belong to one class only, and that all share a similar heritage and inheritance.
A.) Think Alike (Intellectual Envy)
1.) For example in our Educational Programs we have largely institutionalized envy so those who have the skills to excel in learning are held back in order to insure that those who are slower and perhaps are not as gifted are not left behind. While well intentioned such a program has the effect of doing what envy always does and that is it works to level achievement to the level of the under-achiever. The one who might academically distinguish themselves, if given the opportunity, is retarded in their advancement out of our desire to make sure that that all advance together.
2.) In our culture with its mass media owned by a comparative number of small outlets, what is moved towards is a mass communication that gives people the same information resulting in a group think. This group think makes for a egalitarianism in opinion and goes a long way towards achieving the goal of envy by insuring that there will be protection against originality in thinking, protection against free and unfettered intellectual exchange of ideas, and
protection against superiority in thinking of individuals.
Remember the goal of culturally institutionalized envy is to pull down the superior so that the result is a grand leveling effect. This results in the creation of Mass Man — the herd — where no one distinguishes themselves and all are the same. All think the same, look the same, act the same, and all have the same.
Illustration — Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeson”
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”
So begins Vonnegut’s 1961 short story.
Vonnegut goes on to describe the conditions of this equality brought on by the cultural wide presence of envy:
They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
This government enforced equality was achieved by imposing prosthetic technologies on those who were above average; these prosthetics, however, were designed not to enhance, but to diminish. So, for example, ballerinas who might otherwise rise above their peers in grace, elegance and beauty, were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.
Then there were those of above average intelligence like the title character’s father, George Bergeron.
[He] had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their intelligence.
Whenever George began to formulate a complex idea, which often involved questioning the status quo, a sharp, piercing noise would shoot in his ear distracting him and derailing his train of thought. Sometimes the noise was like a siren going off, other times “like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer.” Regular and incessant, the distraction overwhelmed and undermined natural intelligence.
3.) Political Correctness
Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities should be eliminated.
Political correctness has as its goal this leveling conformity where all think alike. Thinking that leads to conclusions that one lifestyle should be preferred above another lifestyle because it is superior is not allowed because those who are living the inferior lifestyle use envy as a tool to make all lifestyles the same.
The envy of the intellectually mediocre establishes a conceptual standardization so that it may denounce and condemn those who don’t conform to the officially approved thinking mode.
B.) All Belong To One Class (Social Envy)
Roosevelt, in the 1936 campaign ran against the “Economic Royalists.” The incipient idea in casting one group of Americans as “Royalists,” over against another group who were not is a classic example of envy being used as a motivating tool. The idea was then to pull the Economic Royalists down so that economic egalitarianism, as fueled by envy, could be established.
But this applies to not only the moneyed but to any class of people who have developed some kind of superiority. Envy works to eliminate categories of superior and inferior so that all can be the same. We see this working itself out in children’s contests where it is insisted that everyone get a medal and that all are winners. Again, this is well intentioned but such a mindset reflects the work of envy which insists that all are the same. The refusal to recognize the achievers does not lift up those who tried but failed, but instead pulls down those who tried and succeeded.
C.) All similar patrimony (Familial Envy)
This is envy working to insure that no family rises above another. Estate taxation and death taxes are the way that our collective envy works to make sure that families which are inter-generationally gifted can not rise above other families.
If Abraham were alive in our time he would be severely faulted for sending his servant back to his own people to find a bride for Isaac. Because of familial envy it is thought that all families are equal and so no consideration should be given to a family background that a potential spouse may come from or that a potential adopted child might come from.
The end result of envy then when embraced collectively by a culture is to migrate ever downward to the lowest common denominator. Cultural envy when institutionalize leads to the constant integration into the void. Institutionalized envy leads to the flattening out of all distinctions and cuts at the roots any ability to distinguish oneself from the herd.
Culturally wide accepted envy forces those who are envied for some distinction that yet remains to avoid the eye of envy by insisting that they are not superior in any sense, that all others are equal to them, that they believe the catechism of envy and egalitarianism is true and that they join with the envious in condemning to exile all who not swear allegiance to the code of equality.
Now just a word about where all this culturally institutionalized envy leads eventually,
Envy intervenes with increasing negativity in several capacities. Envy shunts aside the intelligent, the strong, and the virtuous and does not encourage others to pursue and develop these abilities. Scholarly envy towards the best and most studious produces and promotes academic laziness and loss of interest in critical and analytical thinking skills. Social envy creates obstacles to the public recognition of the best.
In short … the more envy there is in a culture, the less the collective capacity to propel forth great men and women.
So, having considered all this we can better understand why the writer to Proverbs could say, “Who is able to stand before envy?”
And the ironic thing is that after all this work to achieve egalitarianism, the envious still do not have their envy lifted from them for envy poisons the sweetness of all the sources and streams of human enjoyment. Indeed, this is a sin that as the proverbs says rottens the bones.
By way of conclusion let us continue to probe some ways that we might cure envy in ourselves.
Emulation
In Hebrews 11 the writer is encouraging those with a less than adequate faith to emulate the heroes of the faith.
Emulation is a cure to envy. Instead of envying those who are gifted or talented in some way we ought to try and emulate them. I will never be the Theologian that G. K. Beale is but I can admire him and seek to emulate him and even if I never become as talented and gifted as he is I can be as talented and gifted as I can be.
Gratitude
We can be thankful for our betters. Instead of trying to pull them down via envy we can thank God that he has raised them up to be a gift to us.
Mind our own business
It is enough for each of us to seek to be the best that we can be for the Glory of God. This means we haven’t enough time to be envious of others because we are so busy honing the gifts that God has given us. There is no need to preoccupy ourselves with what we don’t have if we preoccupy ourselves w/ improving what God has given us.
Remember our guilt is taken away by Christ
Envy is born of feelings of inadequacy and the resultant guilt. It may be the case that in some endeavor one may be inadequate because they simply don’t have the abilities but there is no need to feel guilty and so use envy to pull down the qualified. Instead, because we know our guilt has been taken away we can acknowledge our inadequacy and be happy for those who are gifted and talented.
We Weep w/ those who Weep and Rejoice w/ those who rejoice
The Christian rejoices with his fellow Christian who is talented above him. He glorifies God that God sovereignly distributed His gifts as he deemed best. Are we willing to say with John the Baptist … “He must increase and I must decrease.”