Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your Joy

by Tilly Dillehay

We’ll find that doing battle against envy involves faith in and worship of God’s superior and essential glory.

What if, instead of envying those whom we perceive to be superior to us in whatever way we happen to value, we began to look upon them as part of the Great Story—players in God’s theater, prisms reflecting aspects of God’s glory that we might never see in ourselves?

Though he was neither lonely nor discontented, nevertheless, in the overflow of his generosity, God created the universe as a theater for his glory. The heavens declare it. The earth is filled with it. So if we fail to see it, then we must be blind.

Without access to the source of the real glory, we go nuts over any little thing that reminds us of it. The personal glories each person has been gifted with—their beauties, their personalities, their creations, their physical talents, their money, their ability to love others—we watch and compare and adore and attack these glories wherever we find them.

Jealousy is a feeling of discomfort and anger that something you have is being threatened. This means that jealousy can sometimes be righteous. God himself is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5-6; Deuteronomy 6:15). Envy, in contrast, is distress over something that someone else possesses. It is always sinful, and it is not a feeling ever attributed to God.11 Covetousness is the desire for what someone else possesses. It would be satisfied simply to have what the other person has. Envy, in contrast, takes it personally that the other person has what he has, and would be satisfied to see the possession or quality destroyed rather than see the other person enjoying it.

People usually envy things they already have in some measure. If you’ve been called smart, you’re more likely to envy genius.

A dog would never have grasped for God’s power and knowledge the way Satan and Eve did. Nor could it have. It was precisely Satan and Eve’s borrowed glory that made them capable of recognizing glory, valuing it, and ultimately, falling over it.

Solomon understood the human heart. He knew that a true mother would jump to stop the barbarism because she would do anything to save her baby’s life, including giving it up to her lying friend. More importantly, he knew that an envious woman, the kind who would stoop to lying about whose baby is whose, would be tripped up by her own sin. And she was.

Envy does not generally motivate us to better ourselves. It motivates us to destroy others.

I’ve often found it true that the idolatries of a person’s heart don’t become apparent until the person stops getting what they want.

I compared myself to people in passing. If asked, I would have called it insecurity, not envy.

I remember vividly a moment when I experienced intense envy of someone’s physical body. I call this “dust envy,” because our physical bodies are created from dust, the Bible tells us, and to dust our bodies will return (Genesis 2:7; 3:19).

In this way, we image the God who is spirit only, as well as imaging the God who became a human like us. Think about this—our eyes see, and in this way, we image God, who sees. Our ears hear, and in this way, we image the God who hears. But our basic anatomy is also eternally significant: it was the shape God chose, knowing Jesus would wear it one day.

All Christians must be prepared for the day that we could be required to give up comforts, health, or even our lives for the sake of the gospel. But what the creation account does teach is that, from the beginning, the human body and soul were meant to go together.

To say that Jesus wasn’t good looking is to admit two obvious things: First, there are more and less attractive people, and this is not all subjective to time and place. Second, the physical appearance of a person doesn’t tell us anything about his merit or righteousness.

That’s the difference between the Bible’s view of outward beauty and the world’s view: The world places an improper value on outward beauty. It ranks it higher than it should.

To help you see the line more clearly, ask yourself questions such as, Can I imagine Jesus walking around Galilee healing people who were unhappy with the size of their noses? How do I think Jesus would have responded to a man who asked Jesus to make him 6′5″ instead of 5′5″? Would paradise mean the absence of all that I currently dislike about my body, or would it mean the absence of all my insecure, comparison-driven, discontented feelings toward my body?

If the bodily inequality that you struggle over is disease, deformity, or handicap, then you can comfort yourself with a promise that these things will be done away with. All of creation groans now (Romans 8:22), waiting for its day of deliverance from evils like these. But for the person struggling under inequalities of another kind—his best friend is a star basketball player and he is five-foot-nothing and hanging out on the bench—other kinds of truth need to be spoken.

While it may seem appealing to think of your new body as the body of your dreams or the body you’ve always wanted, this presumes that your dreams are untainted by sin and that what you want is what is best.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes it’s just not your party. Sometimes you are not the star in the room. Can you handle that? The battle against envy is about growing the kind of heart that rejoices over somebody else’s party hat.

We are born imitators. If we aren’t imitating good examples, then we will be imitating bad ones.

And lest we forget, envy is what prompted the chief priests to deliver Jesus up to his death (Mark 15:10).

The power of the mind, like all other glories that God lends, can be used for wickedness as well as for good.

Do you think you’re wise? Really? Well, then, what about the jealousy and ambition in your heart? It’s a warning sign that your wisdom is not the kind that comes from above.

We won’t look wise to those who are perishing, because the word of the cross is folly to them, according to 1 Corinthians 1:18. The wisdom we have chosen is of a different kind, meant to bring humility to mankind. It will stand the test of time.

If they’re drawn to this message at all, it will be because of the simple, upside-down truth: Even the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Even his weakness is stronger than our strength.

the spirit of material comparison is as old as the exile from Eden.

Creation entails ownership.

God doesn’t need our money. In the words of the apostle Paul, He “does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served with human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:24-25).

The Lord makes poor, and the Lord makes rich. Therefore, when you envy your prosperous neighbor, you are, at one level, begrudging God’s generosity. When you feel resentful at your own financial lot, you are failing to trust the sovereign God.

Money envy, like all envy, must be confronted with the goodness and sovereignty of God.

On the contrary, Scripture is crystal clear that financial status is no sure indicator of spiritual status.

Now contrary to popular misquotings, Paul did not say that money is the root of all evil but that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

being rich in this present age means almost nothing in light of eternity.

Now don’t misunderstand me. How we use our wealth is a huge deal. Indeed, it’s such a reliable barometer of our faith in Christ that our eternal destiny could be revealed by it. Remember the goats in Matthew 25. Remember the rich man in Luke 16. But when I say that being rich in this age means almost nothing, here’s what I mean: being rich in this present age is nothing to be envious of, because in the end, this wealth is unbelievably short-lived. This present age is temporal, whereas the age to come is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

Compared to what’s coming, this present age is breathtakingly short. It’s an eye-blink’s worth of prosperity.

So if you want to love your rich friend, don’t envy her. If she has Christ, then encourage her to demonstrate it by blessing others with her wealth, and rejoice with her. If she doesn’t have Christ, then she has nothing. No solid joys, no lasting pleasures, no foundation for the future. And that is not an enviable position.

If we can’t rejoice at genuine strokes of beauty wielded against our satanic enemies, then we are obviously blind to the battle. We obviously don’t love the General or the thing he fights for, if we begrudge points scored by people on our own team.

We have to saturate our minds in Scripture in order to keep our eyes open to the spiritual nature of what we’re doing in the creative world.

God’s creative energy expanded to the invention of stumbling fawns, pulsing veins, peonies exploding into bloom, whales digesting invisible living things, the moon as reflector, and the shocking thing that can happen to dried corn kernels when you heat them.

In fact, every common and ordinary thing we observe in God’s green world—observable and repeatable—is a resounding chorus of artistic genius.

Even our best work can only remind others of something that God has already painted or carved.

Even with the knowledge that our art is a borrowed glory, we can know that God smiles on the endeavor. He is a supporter of the arts. The first commissioner of art recorded in Scripture, in fact, was God himself.

God, the original artist, has shown himself to be interested in beauty. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have wasted time on butterflies. He also wouldn’t have sent the Holy Spirit on purpose to enable these artisans to make beautiful things for his temple.

Jesus, the God-man who walked among us, also put his hand to the work of an artist—storytelling. In obedience to his Father, he told stories. He told stories that made such a mark on his audience that light itself spread into the world through the retelling of the stories.

Rejoice in the talent that God has spread among his people.

Combat the falsehood, and pray for the one who uses his art to tell falsehoods.

you must pray for a heart that rejoices with the truth.

God doesn’t need your productivity, but he can often use it to provide for others.

Your job is to do your job, great or small, and do it to the best of your God-given ability.