Article August 8, 1977 Issue

No Place for Envy

JEANNE A. DOLLINS

Envy is just an ordinary, garden-variety weed. Oh, it claims that we are responsible for its planting. We may find ourselves believing that envy is a deep, secret, personal problem that we are stuck with. But God is the only Mind, and He is infinite good. Therefore envy has no real existence. It was never planted in Mind or in man, Mind's reflection. As soon as we stop claiming it as our own, it begins to wilt. In the sunshine of Christlike, unselfed love, it withers rootlessly away.

Deluded by materialistic logic, people credit both good and evil as real and believe that evil has a legitimate place in thought. Accepting this false premise, one may find himself longing to be naturally and wholly loving in his thoughts toward others, but burdened by the suggestion that he is at the same time envying those he would love. His admiration for a relative or friend may be great, but if based merely on a limited, personal sense such admiration could become unstable and lack immunity from envy. Mortal measurements stir discontent and would keep us striving with ourselves and with one another, or looking longingly toward someone else as the source of our happiness or satisfaction.

Paul must have encountered such suggestions of contrariety, for he wrote, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." He asked, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The answer is in his next words: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."^{Rom. 7:19, 24, 25;} J. B. Phillips's translation of this passage reads, "I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord."