Envy and the Things We Behold
Envy is covetousness shaped by what a heart keeps looking at, and it loosens its grip as a Christian beholds Christ and learns to rejoice in the good God gives to others.
God Named It in the Tenth Word
God closed the Ten Commandments by reaching past the hand to the heart: “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's” (Exodus 20:17). Paul later called covetousness what it is at bottom, listing it among the earthly things to be put to death, “covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Envy wants what belongs to another because the heart has decided that some good thing, and whoever has it, can supply what God alone supplies.
Asaph confessed how it starts, and it starts with the eyes: “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:2–3). He saw their ease and their sleek health while troubles crowded his own days, and the sight worked on him until it nearly took him down.[1]
We Become What We Behold
Paul describes the Christian's growth as a kind of looking, since “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The same law runs in the other direction, and Chris has described what happens to people who spend their devotional attention elsewhere: “Most of us have a quiet time. It's just we go onto Instagram and Facebook and social media and we behold what other people have… slowly, consistently, over time transformed, just like we would be if we read God's Word, transformed to be coveters. To be professional comparers.”[4]
Israel showed the pattern long before anyone owned a phone. The elders came to Samuel and asked for “a king to judge us like all the nations,” and when Samuel warned them what such a king would take from them, they insisted, “there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5, 19–20). God gave them what they demanded, and Chris preached that chapter to a church living inside an economy with the same appetite: “A significant portion of our economy is dependent on coveting. A significant portion of how we've built this economy over our nation's history is dependent on you not being happy with what you have. And you wanting what someone else has.”[4] He reached back to Robin Leach, whose Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous toured the mansions of the wealthy decades before the smartphone, and the feed now runs the same tour around the clock.[4]
A Highlight Reel Against a Hidden Life
Comparison presents itself as harmless information, a way of keeping up with friends and knowing how people are doing. Its cost shows up in the home, and Chris has named it plainly: “there's some quarreling that's going on in some folks' lives. There's some disquietude, some unhappiness, some lack of contentment. And if you could just turn off the comparison, if you could just turn off defining your situation by everyone else's situation, you would find so much more joy, and the people that live with you would too.”[4]
What gets compared is rarely the whole picture. “People usually don't Instagram the photos that show just abject chaos. They don't Instagram the pictures of child number 1 with their hands around the neck of child number 2.”[6] Chris gave the example of an old college friend who took a hundred pictures and posted the one where she looked her best, so that the viewer ends up measuring his own private failures against someone else's chosen moment.[6] Jesus warned his disciples, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1), and Chris applied that warning to the approval economy online, where the like button “doesn't just empower others to approve of our posts or our tweets. It also has the power to influence what we share.”[7]
Chris has also taken the research seriously, telling the church that “the science is pretty clear that time on social media is inversely correlated with happiness, especially with females. Significantly more so with females.”[2] For the person already caught in comparison he gave blunt counsel: “you should not be on social media. It's like a type 2 diabetic, like, constantly going to the bakery.”[2]
Asaph's Question
Envy eventually turns into a theological argument, and Asaph voiced it: “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence” (Psalm 73:13). Chris has called this the Asaphian mind virus and showed how it reaches a teenage girl who watches another account collect attention “simply because that girl is willing to act stupid or show more skin. And in this moment… the mind virus is knocking on her door saying, does it really count for anything that you're trying to walk this way when so-and-so over here is getting all sorts of attention for doing exactly the opposite?”[1] The same question visits a pastor who watches a faithless church fill its seats and a young man who watches an indifferent athlete receive every honor, and each of them is asking whether God keeps any account of faithfulness at all.[1]
Asaph found his answer in worship: “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end” (Psalm 73:16–17). The prosperity he envied looked different once he saw it from God's house, set in slippery places and headed for ruin (Psalm 73:18).
Looking Without Owning
Freedom from envy involves both the environment a person lives in and the habits of his eyes. Chris has urged the church that “you need to watch the company you keep and disengage from systems that naturally incentivize strutting, aggrievement, deception,” so that a person is “not constantly being exposed” to what feeds the craving.[2] He has also described the slower skill underneath, learning to “develop a kind of season of, I'm going to really try to learn how to look at things and say, that's nice without feeling a need to own them.”[3] A Christian trained that way can see a good marriage or a healthy baby and give thanks for it as God's gift to someone he loves.
Chris preached this in a sermon on infertility, where the temptation to compare cuts deep, and he pointed two friends toward what they already share: “The focus of that relationship isn't who has a baby and who doesn't. The focus of that relationship is you both have Christ, and that should be the main focus of that relationship.”[3]
Rejoicing When Another Is Blessed
Elizabeth had waited a lifetime for a child, and when her young relative Mary arrived carrying a greater blessing, Elizabeth cried out with joy, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42–43). Chris saw the gospel at work in that greeting: “This is what the gospel does. It motivates people to celebrate the successes of others, even when it steals the spotlight, even when it diminishes their own accomplishments.”[5] Rejoicing of that kind runs against every instinct the feed trains, which is why it takes grace to produce it.
Nothing on Earth Besides You
Asaph came out of the sanctuary with a different treasure: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26).[1] Christians hold that portion in Christ, who possessed every glory by right and yet “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6–7), so that people who had spent their lives grasping at what belonged to others could receive what belongs to him.