ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
October 15, 2021
I would visit a friend’s office often, and on his wall was a beautifully framed poster which read: Happiness is experienced when you stop comparing yourself to others. Funny thing is that I envied my friend’s office. It had more square footage than my first apartment, a private bathroom and a door that lead to an outdoor prayer garden. It is one thing to read about the unhealthiness of envy and something very different to find a way of not being envious. The Bible reminds us to avoid envy, including Paul placing envy alongside debauchery, idolatry, hatred, jealousy, rage, drunkenness and orgies (Galatians 5:19-21). A person senses that envy is bad, according to Paul, but acknowledging one’s envy does not mean you are really doing anything about it. Christianity has a long history of telling people not to do certain things, while providing no explanation of how exactly a person might keep something like envy in check. A starting place is naming, not only the unhappiness in our lives, but the source of the unhappiness. We too often believe our unhappiness is directly connected to the fact we do not have something someone else has. We perceive happiness as something achieved on the other side of acquiring whatever “IT” is. Assuming we are talking about something other than basic items found on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, then the source of our unhappiness is probably found within. Envy is often connected to denial or avoidance. We do what is necessary to ignore the internal injury by casting our focus on something external. If only we could have, _________ (fill in the blank), then we would be made whole. Sadly, obtaining whatever we envied only provided a momentary pause from the pain. Soon our focus will be upon something else, once again avoiding the origin of the problem.
May your loving presence provide me courage, O Compassionate One, as I cast my vision inward and ask challenging questions about my own life, my unhappiness, my hurt. Amen.
