Going Green

While “going green” is becoming popular these days, “green” is not just synonymous with environmentalism. Going green, as in being envious, has been around since Cain and Abel.

I’ve thought about this for awhile, and I can’t see a single good thing that comes out of envy.

Envy has led me to say some pretty dumb things, think nasty thoughts and do things I’ve lived to regret. Envy of a neighbor can lead us to buy things we can’t afford and don’t need. Envy encourages comparisons and bitterness—even bitterness against God because we grow to think we’re entitled to happiness or “stuff” God has allowed others to have. There’s a funny but narcissistic t-shirt in catalogs that says, “God loves you, but I’m his favorite.” The reverse, but equally poor thinking by the envious and insecure would be, “God loves me, but you’re his favorite.”

We might think it affirming to be envied. I find it very uncomfortable. I once had a friend who occasionally told me when she envied me. I was never quite sure how to handle that. The day she told me she was relieved that my boyfriend and I had broken up because she’d experienced a break-up a few months earlier was the day our friendship began to die. Competition usually does not nurture friendship.

We can deal with envy in a number of ways. We can realize that no one’s life is perfect, no matter how ideal it looks to us. Would we trade our problems for those of the envied one?

We can respond with genuine gratitude for our blessings. I just visited with a friend whose house burned nearly to the ground last year. She recalls thinking as she watched the blaze with her family and pets around her, “This is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. [I can handle this.]” (She had lost an infant daughter several years before.)

My pastor recently challenged us to go beyond that thinking. “Can you rejoice in the good fortune of others?” he asked. Oh my. Sometimes I celebrate with the recipient of good news. I can manage grudging enthusiasm for someone (a person who is “undeserving” or not very likable) who has come into a major windfall, or someone who takes a dream vacation. But now I was being told that the mark of a faithful Christian was to be genuinely happy about someone else’s success or blessings. It changes the perspective from the negative, “Don’t envy anyone,” to the positive, “Rejoice with others as they are blessed.” Another reminder of ways in which I must mature as a believer—and maybe a reminder for you, too.