Let’s Talk About Envy

All it takes is one little picture. One little comment. One fleeting glimpse of another person’s:

—any aspect of their life that appears to be better than yours. That knotted-up, burning feeling of envy might begin in your heart, your stomach, or your head … along with a familiar mantra of: look what they have that I don’t. Look what they have that I never will. Look at the multiple blessings they get from God when I do without so many.

I could pretend that this post came about because I observed envy in another person, or that someone came to me asking for counsel about it, or that I had been reading a book on it and wanted to share some new insight. But none of that is true. This post was written because I’ve fallen into the trap of envy many times in my life. I’m intimately familiar with what triggers it, what it feels like, how to wallow in it, and (thank you, God) the best ways to overcome it.

Can you relate?

Envy goes by many names, some softened to reduce the stigma of shame that accompanies this ugly emotion. You might call it “the comparison trap” online or with friends. You might call it “covetousness” in church or in Bible study, in reference to the tenth commandment. You might look it up online to see that “jealous” can be another word for envy but it also has some other meanings of its own (which is why God himself can be jealous, but not envious).

But no matter what you call it, envy often overtakes you without warning, like a flash fire of emotion, seemingly beyond your control. Its occasional presence is part of our fallen human condition; everyone has felt it at one time or another.

To be clear, it’s not a sin to briefly experience a rush of envy, but it is a sin to dwell there.

The sin of envy makes you feel depressed and eaten-up inside. It can preoccupy your thoughts and ruin your day. It can negatively affect your relationships with people and even cause you to greatly dislike or turn against someone without actual cause. Over time, if left unchecked and undealt with, it can make you miserable, bitter, and blind to the blessings in your own life.

When you envy someone or something, you have a strong desire to possess something you don’t have (see above list), but someone else does. Google’s dictionary says that it’s “a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck [you could also say God’s blessings].” Envy is dangerous and harmful because it stems directly from pride, considered by many to be the worst or greatest of all sins.

So call it what you will—comparison, covetousness, or straight-up envy—but recognize it for the evil that it is in your life and the damage it will do if left unchecked.

If you are prone to envy (and most of us are, in one way or another), you’ll likely never eradicate it from your life this side of heaven. The key is to respond to it quickly, decisively, and with confidence that God will help you overcome it … rather than dwell in discontent, wallow in misery, and succumb to bitterness.

Here are some tips, some reminders, of how you can respond when envy blindsides you and you feel yourself yielding in a familiar resentful and self-pitying way:

Pray. Ask God to remove the envy from your heart (call it by its name—don’t shy away from the shame you feel before your Father, who knows both your heart and your sin). You can cry out to him with all honesty. You can tell him why you feel envious, you can admit your insecurities, your pride, and the darkest areas of your heart to him. Repent from this sin and ask for forgiveness; he is merciful and will bless you because you have cried out to him.

Pray (part 2). Here’s most likely a harder prayer: pray for the person you envy. Do this as soon as possible, even while you still hold anger or resentment for the person in your heart. Pray that God would care for that person and bless them, pray for their salvation if they are not a believer, pray that you could be a light of Christ to them whenever you encounter them next. And then follow through. The next time you see them or have other contact, be a genuine blessing to them. While this isn’t easy to do, over time it gets easier, and less frequent as you begin to experience envy less often, Lord willing.

Be grateful for what you do have. Make a list, if that helps. Many people make a “gratitude list” over a long period of time, and then when envy or discontent strike, they have tangible evidence (in their own hand!—or on their own device) of God’s blessings in their life. So count your blessings. They are many.

Remember what they say about comparison. I struggled mightily with comparison and envy back in my early child-rearing days, twenty years ago. Back then, the expression I heard most often was “comparison is the death of contentment.” Recently, people seem more likely to say, “comparison is the thief of joy,” which is similar. (For whatever reason, the “contentment” one speaks to me more—maybe because I pray for contentment 24/7 in my life, whereas I expect or hope for true joy only from time to time. But who knows? I may be overanalyzing this.)

If you must compare, compare yourself to your former self. Has God done great things in your life? How has he blessed you, comforted you, strengthened you, upheld you, and loved you? How has he brought you out of your broken past and transformed you from who you used to be? How has he provided security and a firm foundation in your life? Have you grown in humility, lovingkindness, patience, self-control, or faithfulness because of your relationship with Jesus? I can speak personally to each and every one of these things in my life. I am not who I was before I knew Jesus, and I thank God for that. Everything else that I am not, or have not, pales in comparison to what he has already given me and done for me.

I mentioned above that I didn’t write this post because I observed envy in someone else’s life, or read about it in a book. I wrote it because I was hit, abruptly and viscerally, with a wave of envy that knocked me flat (emotionally) for a couple of days. Yikes. What a waste of time and energy spent on a sin that I needed to repent of and then move on. It took every single one of the above reminders—things I already knew—to pull myself out of it. And the Lord forgave. And I moved on, wiser and more resilient, I hope, to the pull of this all-too-common sin.

You’re human, and so you will sometimes visit this place called envy—probably involuntarily. But be very careful not to dwell there.

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