I’ve been casting for an hour without success. Then out of the corner of my eye I notice a little flurry of motion downstream. I look there to see another fisherman with a bent rod, clearly playing a nice fish. At that point, the deadly sin for this week kicks in and I stand there watching, filled with pure, green envy for that other angler’s success.
Most of us probably don’t worry too much about that little green worm which eats at us in situations like mine on the stream or when the neighbor gets a new car or a co-worker receives a promotion. Many times, it’s a mere passing annoyance and we are able to return to our own fishing or get back to work not too much the worse for a little bout of envy.
However, envy is a serious matter. As William Willimon says, it’s very much a social sin and it has the capacity to poison almost any relationship. Scripture has some serious warnings about envy, including the primordial story of Cain and Abel, when envy between brothers led to the world’s first murder. Our text this week is James 3:13-18 and James takes the sin of envy very seriously, naming in verse 14 the problem of “bitter envy.”
Like all the deadly sins, part of the evil of envy is that it is a seedbed for further sin. As James says in verse 16, “For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.”
Thomas Aquinas describes envy as “sorrow at another’s good.” Envy is being sad when another person is fortunate or blessed, because that fortune or blessing does not belong to oneself.
In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean speaks through the voice of an older brother who tells how he had figured out the hatch on a trout stream in Montana and was catching lots of fish. Suddenly his younger brother appeared, throwing rocks into the hole he was fishing, scaring away the fish and spoiling the fun. Brotherly envy turned into malicious behavior, actively wrecking the good fortune of a sibling.
It’s not too hard to see envy going full steam in our Christian church communities. Every inequality and difference is ripe with the possibility of envying each other. Willimon believes the worst envy arises among those who are near to each other both in community and in station in life. Envy of Bill Gates doesn’t amount to much, but envy of my brother or sister in Christ who sits next to me in worship can truly turn bitter.
May God deliver us from envy and send us the peace of which James speaks in verses 17 and 18.