Editorial April 15, 1972 Issue

Freedom from Covetousness

Naomi Price

Covetousness is one of the devil's tools for depriving mankind of the enjoyment of good things that rightfully belong to them. It is an enemy—an element of mortal thought that it is sheer stupidity to accept as a member of one's mental household, because it is a thief.

To be envious of someone else's possessions—his good character or looks, his mental capacities, his friends or social position, his spiritual qualities, his opportunities or his material possessions— implies discontent with one's own attributes and substance. It shows that one is comparing oneself unfavorably with another person and believing that he has an identity better than one's own.

It is unhealthy for people to think this way. To do so is to deny one's own infinitely good, God-created, God-sustained being. Such thinking accuses God, the creator, of injustice—of favoring some of His children more than others—with the result that if one seems to have a problem of human lack, it multiplies it.

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