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Soul Jaundice
James 3: 13 - 4:3 |
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Summary
Soul Jaundice Not long ago, a radio talk-show host passed on an observation he’d heard somewhere to the effect that Americans are the least envious people in the world. I don’t know how you could prove such a thing, but I understand how a person might arrive at that conclusion. After all, hordes of people in other parts of the world are clamoring to get into the United States. And compared to many other countries, we have a lot of advantages here — including a stable political system that favors individual rights, many natural resources, (most of the time) economic opportunity, and peace on our own soil. Not since the War of 1812 have we had to fight a foreign nation on our own soil. What’s more, according to Joseph Epstein, who has written a book on envy, a lot of the anti-Americanism in other parts of the world has its root in envy of what we have in this country. Envy, of course, is being resentful of what someone else has or at least having a painful desire to have it yourself. Epstein points out that the United States was not always the center of international envy. Sixty years ago, people looked to Europe, with its great architecture, museums and art works, and its many artists, composers and writers, as the mother lode of culture. But today, when it comes to culture, many people see America as where the action is. Envy afflicts all But despite all that, it is unlikely to be true that we as a people are less envious than any other group. Envy is rooted in human nature, and it grows out of comparison. We may not want to live in some other country, but when we look at our circumstances and see somebody right here who’s got it better than we have, we are on ground fertile for envy to grow. While we are all equal in God’s sight, we are not all equal in our good fortune, advantages, abilities, accomplishments, possessions, natural endowments or reputation. Inequities occur also in the things we do, the things we are given and the things we have. Some people are super-smart while others are of average intelligence. Some people have striking good looks while most of us are ordinary looking. Some people are hardly ever sick while others are hardly ever well. Some students have to burn the midnight oil to get a B-minus on the morning’s test while other students party all night and get an A nonetheless. And so it goes. Another place where envy shows up today in America is in the resentment sometimes directed toward immigrants who come here and end up being more financially successful than some who are native born. Someone has defined envy as “the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.” Envy is a form of jealousy. The poet John Dryden called jealousy a “jaundice of the soul,” and the phrase applies equally to envy. And here’s a strange finding: Recently the economist Robert H. Frank reported that most Americans would rather have an annual salary of $85,000 if their countrymen were earning no more than $75,000 than a salary of $100,000 if everyone else was earning $125,000.3 That blows my mind, but if true, it speaks loudly of envy. The 1984 movie Amadeus was a good study of envy. That film, about the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, presents him as supremely gifted, but also as being something of a jerk. He preens and giggles absurdly. He ridicules the dullness of other people’s music while praising the brilliance of his own. He has a sharp, quick mind, but he uses it for such crudities as talking dirty backward. And yet, day after day, he composes powerful, gorgeous music. His rival is a composer named Antonio Salieri. Although Salieri also writes good music, it is not on the same level of excellence as is Mozart’s. Salieri, who considers himself more devoted to God than Mozart, resents the fact that such sublime talent would be given to such an obscene brat as he believes Mozart to be. He is so envious and bitter that he cannot admit that Mozart earned his success. Eventually, Salieri tricks Mozart into writing a great requiem mass. He plans to kill Mozart when it is complete and claim the mass as his own work. But Mozart is taken ill and dies before completing the project. Salieri concludes that God chose to kill Mozart rather than share his gift with another. Such are the lengths to which envy can drive us. James warns about envy James, the biblical author, understands this. He says, “For where there is envy ... there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” In other words, envy is a dangerous thing. And he goes on to speak of “conflicts and disputes” that occur because you “want something and do not have it” or because you “covet something and cannot obtain it.” There are two different kinds of wisdom, said James in this passage, though we might rightly ask if one of them ought to bear the name “wisdom” at all. The first could be called “godly wisdom,” which James said is shown by a “good life” that includes “works ... done with gentleness.” That wisdom has its roots in God’s love. The other wisdom is evidenced by “bitter envy and selfish ambition” and, in contrast to godly wisdom, is not “from above”; it is not only earthbound, but also “devilish,” or, if we may push that word to its logical conclusion, it is “from below.” That’s the category into which James puts envy. Attitude adjustment and spiritual seeking The remedy for envy is though both attitude adjustment and spiritual seeking. In terms of attitude, we need to work on seeking satisfaction in whatever skills and talents we have and in what we can do with them. Years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it like this:\
That means that sometimes we need to think more about what is accomplished than who accomplishes it. Consider John the Baptist. He had been faithfully proclaiming the kingdom of God for some time before Jesus appeared on the scene. He had withstood the ridicule and loneliness of the work. But the moment Jesus came on the scene, the crowds began to leave John to listen to Jesus. Someone pointed this out to John, and John, with true humility replied, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” For John, all that mattered was that God’s will was being done, not who got the credit for doing it. A spiritual issue After I started writing this sermon on that topic, I could not help but think about the fact that I would be delivering it to a congregation composed of folks who are already nice people — and, in effect, telling them to be even nicer. “Now folks, don’t envy others. That’s not nice.” When put like that, it sounds a bit silly. But I hope that is not how you hear it. Without a doubt, envy is a problem of the human condition, and it is not something that we would describe as “nice.” But it is also a serious spiritual issue. It is related to the 10th commandment, which tells us not to covet, and “covet” is another word for envy. (In our text, James uses “covet” as a synonym for “envy.”) What’s more, centuries ago, when the church was trying to differentiate small sins from big ones, envy made the list of big ones. It was one of the so-called seven deadly sins, and the sins that were put on that list were there because unlike some others, the big seven have the tendency to lead a person on into other sins. Envy, which is so self-focused that it prevents us from loving our neighbor as ourselves, can additionally be deadly because it has the potential to transmogrify into hate. And we when harbor hate, we put other people and our own souls in jeopardy. Thus envy needs to be addressed not merely as a problem of our attitude, but as a sickness of the spirit. That means when we become conscious that we are operating out of enviousness, we need to bring ourselves before God and ask for his forgiveness and help, that we might live as spiritually upright people. 3 Cited by Epstein. |
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