What makes envy so different? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
We read the following in Ecclesiastes 4:4-6:
4 Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
5 The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.
6 Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.
Envy is a strange sin in comparison to all the others. Murder is a sin, but one can understand why someone would want to, for instance, in the case of getting revenge for a perceived wrong done to them. Such a person could delight in eliminating someone whom they do not like.
Theft is a sin, but one can understand the desire to have wealth. Adultery is a sin, but one can understand the desire to have sex. Pornography is a sin, but one can understand the desire to look at the naked human form outside of a marital covenant. I am not saying that these are right to do, but we can understand why people do them. The reason we commit sin is normally that we think that we get something out of it.
Envy is different.
I don’t know anyone who has ever enjoyed envy. Envy causes us to look at someone with animosity and wish we had what they had. To some extent, I do not think wanting what someone else has is always a bad thing. This is why we have role models and mentors. There are people we are told to emulate. I think it is fine for me to look at people with good marriages and say “I want that”, but it is not right for me to look at them and say “I hate that you have that and I don’t!”
In this passage, we deal with the case of envy. The man who works and works but does so out of envy has done something meaningless. He could reach his goal, but then what? HIs desire wasn’t so much the good of the object desired, but rather the being superior to his fellow man in having it, or at least being equal.
The Teacher contrasts this with the fool, a term that shows up in the Proverbs. This is the person who doesn’t do any work and in the end, his own body dies. Still, the Teacher says that it is better to have peace in what one does than to do work out of envy. Envy is something that will destroy a person from within.
If you want something, it is important to ask why you want it. If you want it just because the other person has it, then you do not really want it and it will bring you no joy to acquire it. If your wanting it leads you to work hard and become a better person while still delighting in what the other person has and being able to be happy for them, then you are on a better path. As a man struggling with the divorced life, this is something I have to remind myself of regularly. When other people marry, they are not hurting me intentionally or depriving me. Indeed, I try to give students who are getting married here advice to make sure they stay married and offer any help to them I can along the way.
Envy profits no one. It is the one sin that brings us no pleasure when we commit it.
Next time, we’ll look more at the question of work.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)