Inequality and Envy

Blessings are unequal. Love is unequal. Reward and punishment are unequal. Even trials and tribulations in this life are — you guessed it — unequal. (Perhaps we should be grateful for that last one.)

To some, God’s economy looks a tad irregular, perhaps even unjust — at least, by the measure of man. Others rationalize the plain wording of scripture away, or deny it by hypothesizing that God actually does treat everyone equally, but just in neat, invisible ways we can’t observe or quantify, a theory for which neither life nor the Bible provides any evidence. Still others don’t read their Bibles enough to notice the issue.

The Defining Sin

A small subset of Christians rejoices in God’s apparent inequality, as it gives us opportunity to demonstrate the reality of our faith. Privilege is opportunity to be generous with what God has given. Destitution is opportunity to be a delighted and grateful object of grace. In a world of lowest-common-denominator faux-egalitarianism, a God who does what he chooses with what belongs to him in accordance with his sovereign will and wisdom has a great deal of appeal to us. What’s the alternative: should we begrudge him his generosity to others?

I have written more than once about the evils of envy, the defining sin of our generation. Envy is appalling for a number of reasons, the foremost, perhaps, that it is a compound sin built of other attitudes in need of serious and eternal adjustment: pride, ingratitude, solipsism, lying and spiritual blindness. If the end of the ages comes upon our generation, perhaps it is because our generation is most acutely in need of God’s judgment. It is an envious generation.

An Envious Generation

There have been other envious generations, though they did not fare well. When the Lord Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son, it was to Pharisees and scribes grumbling about the Lord receiving sinners and eating with them. Envy was rotting their bones, and the stench filled the room, so the Lord addressed it with a story in which they might see themselves through his eyes. In the parable, the prodigal’s whiny elder brother is a transparent placeholder for Judaism’s religious leadership:

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ ”

The elder brother’s response is pure envy. It has all the ingredients.

The Recipe for Envy

1/ A Teaspoon of Pride

The recipe for envy starts with pride and, worse, pride in fastidious rule keeping. “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command,” cries envy. It leaps to the forefront to demand acknowledgment for its compliance with the rules. “Why can’t you pay attention to my superior behavior? Why can’t you recognize me in front of friends and family?” Chances are the claims to perpetual obedience are not precisely true, either. I can’t tell you how many “well-behaved” children from Christian homes I’ve watched crash and burn over the years when faced with genuine temptation for the first time. Turns out the exceptional behavior for which they would happily take credit was nothing more remarkable than failure of imagination.

2/ A Cup of Ingratitude

Envy is ingratitude. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours,” says the bewildered father. This was not mere hyperbole, as it might be if a modern, Western father said it to his son. Think about it: he was the older brother, under Jewish law entitled to a double portion of the estate, in his father’s household possessor of the birthright. Everything that was left in the father’s house was literally his, present and future. The party for his little brother would come to an end, but his rights and status in the father’s household would remain. Even while the party went on, he would have been welcome to a prime cut of the fatted calf and a dance with the prettiest girl in the room if only he hadn’t been sulking in the barnyard instead. There was plenty to be happy about if he thought about his situation objectively, but “envy slays the simple”. All he could see was that, for just a moment, his brother was the object of his father’s attentions, and that could not be allowed to stand.

3/ A Sprinkling of Solipsism

Envy is solipsistic. Everything that was all about you becomes all about me. The younger brother’s celebration becomes an occasion on which the elder has been slighted. You can always recognize a person struggling with envy issues by their uncanny ability to make themselves the subject of everyone else’s conversations. So the innocent remark I make about a relative’s hard work and evident skill meets with the response, “Are you saying I’m incompetent?” This can be a baffling reaction to people who don’t recognize it for what it is. Coupled with egregious self-occupation goes the lack of empathy common to solipsists. They neglect to ask all the obvious questions: “Why is my brother home?” (Obvious answer: His plans didn’t work out.) “How does he feel about that? (Obvious answer: Hugely embarrassed.) “How hard must it have been to admit his failures to Dad? (Obvious answer: He must have been desperate.) “What can I do to help?” (Can you see the problem? A thought process perfectly natural to normal people is utterly foreign to the envious.)

4/ A Fistful of Lies

Envy is a liar. Back to the fattened calf, Hebrew symbol of maxed-out celebration. The veal-on-the-hoof you saved “just in case”. Envy pretends it might have been satisfied with the occasional goat, but look how the fatted calf at someone else’s celebration sets off the older brother. That’s the “lies” component of envy. It says it only wants equality, fairness, justice … you name it. What it really wants is the top spot; after all, there are lots of goats, but only one fattened calf. The envious are always lying about their objectives or self-deceived about their own satanic greed. Do you think the elder brother would have been satisfied with the gift of a young goat once he saw the fattened calf killed for his profligate brother? No, me neither. So why did he even bring it up? Because envy is a liar. First-wave feminism told us it only wanted equality. It seemed reasonable and unambitious. Third-wave feminists covet “a world without men”. Turns out the cry for “equality” was just a stepping stone to a different program.

5/ Two Shakes of Spiritual Blindness

Finally, envy is spiritually blind. The elder brother’s rant is not really just an attack on his brother. Fundamentally, it is an attack on his father: “You never gave me a young goat. You killed the fattened calf for him!” In his envy, he utterly misjudges his father, demonstrating that he never knew him, understood his character, or appreciated his love. The envious lack a critical element of faith, without which it is impossible to please God: “Whoever would come to God must believe that he rewards.” When the fact that I am missing certain things in my experience that others enjoy becomes a commentary on the character of God, I have succumbed to cancerous envy. Why seek God if there is no benefit for me?

Rooting Envy Out

Envy sent Joseph to Egypt as a slave. Envy put Jesus on a cross. Envy fought the spreading of the gospel at every turn. Envy is symptomatic of those who refuse to acknowledge God or give him thanks. Envy ruins our enjoyment of the good things we have. Envy would strip the world to its lowest common denominator rather than see anyone enjoying the blessings we covet. Envy would rather everyone eat bugs than witness a few rich neighbors enjoying their steak.

Envy is the spirit of our present age. Watch out for the tiniest seeds of envy growing in your own heart, and show them no mercy.