The Obstacle of Envy

Perhaps the sin I struggle with the most is Envy. I've had a lot of them, I know, but at the root of many of them is Envy. (Fear is also a big one.)

Envy is a spiritual obstacle. It's so easy to fall into it and not even realize that that's what I'm doing. I grew up in a family that was huge on competition. My parents are both very capable and formidable people who've had success in the world and in their personal lives. From the outside, anyhow, they sure look like they have everything figured out. I grew up often feeling as though I never quite measured up to their expectations, in the shadow of other siblings, though I'm the oldest. Never quite fast enough, or sporty enough to make the cut. I see now that I coveted those attributes without seeing the good that I could contribute... without being satisfied with my own talents and abilities.

What's funny is that people who know me personally are always heaping on me all sorts of accolades about my  many talents in music, art, writing, or intellectual pursuits, but the irony is that a part of me secretly dissatisfied with all of these things, because in my mind they were things I did because I couldn't measure up to the things I thought everyone wanted me to do.

Also, for me, if I see another getting away with things I know that I never could, I think a part of me wishes I was them, that I could do just as abominably as them and not experience the consequences as it appears they don't experience.

The ability to show empathy, I believe, can also be tripped up by envy. Empathy is an ability to put yourself into the mind and life of others, generally so that we can relate to them. This ability helps many learn to forgive another--because they can see things from their perspective. Envy can foul that up though. When we put ourselves into the lives of others and then like their lives better than our own, that's when Envy has won.

The process of envy works like such:
1. Compare (A thing, A situation, A characteristic, A behavior, A talent)
2. Place high esteem or Value on the Compared Item.
3. Assess Self as lacking the same Value.
4. Dissatisfaction with Self/Lust for the Compared Value.  --> Self Hatred and Fixation

5. Then repeat steps 3 and 4 forever...

Steps 1 and 2 appear are actually healthy steps. Step 3 CAN be healthy, but it depends on whether we determine inwardly to improve ourselves while remaining satisfied with ourselves in the process. If we don't then we hit this sort of downward spiral that leads to a sort of damnation--an inability to be satisfied--our ability to progress is halted on the fixation of the one characteristic or item we cannot seem to obtain to our own strangely high preset level of satisfaction.

In some cases we can almost skip steps 1 and 2 and go right to 3 and 4, if we're told by another that we're lacking and we simply believe it. And how often are we told by the world that we simply don't measure up?

I also think there's nothing wrong in comparisons with others, if done with an eye of faith in one's own ability to improve and better oneself. But there must be an element of righteousness in it. This is the very essence of intelligence, and when we compare ourselves to virtuous things and then strive to achieve them, we're engaging in a healthy process (assuming of course that we don't envy those virtues). Learning is often done by seeing a behavior, idea, talent or characteristic in someone else modeled, and then we in our infantile way try to copy it. Without the ability to compare we would not be able to learn.

What's funny is that often we envy the very things that would destroy us... spiritually, physically, mentally... you name it, we are capable of doing it all.

And that brings us to my Book of Mormon scripture today. The first part of  Alma Chapter 32 states that there were these people who were financially destitute. They worked with their community to build some great and spacious church (called Rameumpton), and when it was completed they were not allowed to use it. They then got so frustrated with their situation that they apparently stopped worshiping God altogether.

The irony is that had they been allowed to worship in the way the rest of the rich Zoramites worshiped, they would've been engaging in the sin of idolatry and worshiping a false god. Their poverty actually protected them from a terrible spiritual trap, but of course they didn't see it that way. Ultimately because of their poverty and belief in Alma and Amulek and other Nephite missionaries, they will be cast out of the land, which might be another reason to feel spiteful, except that they cast right into a land filled with generous and converted people who nourished them and gave them all that they wanted to live. Ultimately God's blessing to these poor people are inestimable. They received the precious light of faith in Christ, were reminded that they could pray always in every circumstance and didn't need what they envied, and were even healed and made rich temporally through the generosity of their afflictions.

I take from this story a need to examine my own life. What are the things I envy? Are they holding me back from greater blessings? It's time for me to sweep away those obstacles and move forward in faith that whatever tough times come, they are for my blessing and benefit. I have the perfect example in Christ Jesus, who never succumbed to envy, and descended the lowest most humiliating circumstances in order to accomplish the greatest work of love ever conceived.