"Do not dwell in a place where you see others are envious of you, for you will not grow there."
- Abbot Pastor
I'd never considered envy from the other side until I came across Abbot Pastor's strange little saying. I could pound out a little blog post in no time about the evils of envy. There would be a special circle in my freshly imagined hell for Madison Avenue advertising executives. I’d have them tormented eternally by surrounding them with monks who have no envy at all for the beautiful people in their ads and for whatever it was they were selling. Seems unfair to the monks, though. Maybe I'd better rethink this."*
See where the familiar trajectories of thought so often lead? Especially those driven by judgment? I'll soon have everyone in hell if it's up to me to make things right.
It's startling to hear that the one who is being envied is in a place devoid of nourishment. Growth can't happen if our soul's food is the envy of others. Maybe even those damned (in my mind) advertising execs are to be pitied more than judged.
Several years ago I was on a bus with a group where conversation turned to a pastor of a large church several people on the trip had known. His oversized ego had done real damage. And as the image of a narcissist of the first order began to fill out. But as the unflattering and infuriating anecdotes piled up and up, one person said, with deep sympathy, "Oh, that poor man. He must have been miserable and so lonely."
The spell of our judgment was broken. I didn't know the man, but who wants to defend an egomaniac, especially a successful religious one?! These people must be called out and stopped! But my friend's comment cut to the true heart of envy. The egomaniac is the one who tries to live on the sugar of other people's envy. The rush is nice for a moment, but it won't nourish us deeply or for long. It's a fuel insufficient to actual growth.
In Christian tradition, each of the seven deadly sins has a corresponding virtue. And the corrective for envy is kindness. Not judgment. Not contempt. Kindness. If my friend didn't know this explicitly, he knew it intuitively. The image of a person whose ego was trying to live on the envy of others aroused his compassion, not his contempt.
My hunch is that this instinctive kindness arose from my friend's having made some peace with -- or maybe having offered a little kindness to -- the egomaniac in himself. The one who lives in a shadowy corner of the heart of each of us, needing to envied so he'll feel like he matters.
To be kind, I suppose, is one way to say someone matters with no need for any other someone to matter less, which is the nourishment we actually need if we're to grow and flourish.
Have you ever known kindness to unexpectedly meet the ego's need to be envied? Or are there places in your life where kindness needs to replace contempt as a force to make God's world a better place?
*Doyle, B. (2020). A Father’s Day Prayer. Retrieved 20 April 2020, from https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/sam/a-fathers-day-prayer
- Abbot Pastor
I'd never considered envy from the other side until I came across Abbot Pastor's strange little saying. I could pound out a little blog post in no time about the evils of envy. There would be a special circle in my freshly imagined hell for Madison Avenue advertising executives. I’d have them tormented eternally by surrounding them with monks who have no envy at all for the beautiful people in their ads and for whatever it was they were selling. Seems unfair to the monks, though. Maybe I'd better rethink this."*
See where the familiar trajectories of thought so often lead? Especially those driven by judgment? I'll soon have everyone in hell if it's up to me to make things right.
It's startling to hear that the one who is being envied is in a place devoid of nourishment. Growth can't happen if our soul's food is the envy of others. Maybe even those damned (in my mind) advertising execs are to be pitied more than judged.
Several years ago I was on a bus with a group where conversation turned to a pastor of a large church several people on the trip had known. His oversized ego had done real damage. And as the image of a narcissist of the first order began to fill out. But as the unflattering and infuriating anecdotes piled up and up, one person said, with deep sympathy, "Oh, that poor man. He must have been miserable and so lonely."
The spell of our judgment was broken. I didn't know the man, but who wants to defend an egomaniac, especially a successful religious one?! These people must be called out and stopped! But my friend's comment cut to the true heart of envy. The egomaniac is the one who tries to live on the sugar of other people's envy. The rush is nice for a moment, but it won't nourish us deeply or for long. It's a fuel insufficient to actual growth.
In Christian tradition, each of the seven deadly sins has a corresponding virtue. And the corrective for envy is kindness. Not judgment. Not contempt. Kindness. If my friend didn't know this explicitly, he knew it intuitively. The image of a person whose ego was trying to live on the envy of others aroused his compassion, not his contempt.
My hunch is that this instinctive kindness arose from my friend's having made some peace with -- or maybe having offered a little kindness to -- the egomaniac in himself. The one who lives in a shadowy corner of the heart of each of us, needing to envied so he'll feel like he matters.
To be kind, I suppose, is one way to say someone matters with no need for any other someone to matter less, which is the nourishment we actually need if we're to grow and flourish.
Have you ever known kindness to unexpectedly meet the ego's need to be envied? Or are there places in your life where kindness needs to replace contempt as a force to make God's world a better place?
*Doyle, B. (2020). A Father’s Day Prayer. Retrieved 20 April 2020, from https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/sam/a-fathers-day-prayer
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