A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh,
but envy makes the bones rot. | Proverbs 14:30
On Sunday, we looked at Psalm 37, which calls us to trust in God against all odds. David was reminding us that God is bigger than our suffering, but also bigger than the fear of missing out. He begins with an encouragement to not be envious:
Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
be not envious of wrongdoers!
For they will soon fade like the grass
and wither like the green herb. | Psalm 37:1–2
The Bible is full of imperatives to both be content and to avoid comparison. Often, we think about this on the purely earthly level: wanting something that we do not have makes us unhappy. An attempt to keep up with the Jones’ is a losing effort. President Theodore Roosevelt said it best, when he said: Comparison is the thief of joy.
It steals joy because our focus becomes what we want rather than what we have. In a world filled with things, there will NEVER be more in the pile of have. If we play the comparison game, we will always come up short. There will always be an experience we have missed or a place we haven’t been. We get stuck in a place of permanent discontentment. There is no way to win the comparison game, because even if you somehow get the upper hand on your neighbors, there is a great big world out there that you can see via the internet.
David’s call to avoid envying is about much more than our happiness. He realizes that when we focus on what we don’t have, it changes our priorities. It doesn’t just make us miserable, it leads us to believe that the answer to our problems is more stuff. While envy is a thief, it is also a means of forming us. An envious person is on a path that transforms God from being the source and purpose of all things to God being the provider of wants. Envy changes a person from being a worshiping part of creation to being a consumer looking for gratification. It takes your joy, but it can also take your soul.
When Solomon tells us that envy makes the bones rot and David reminds us that this earth will wither and fade, they are both trying to point us past the good things of this earth to the Giver. God blessing us is not for the sake of our individual happiness, but to draw us to Himself. In the end, those who belong to God get to live in fullness for eternity.
This makes envy foolish. As Christians, we have everything that we need and far more than we deserve. Not only this, but we have a purpose: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Comparison is a hindrance to this goal, and a waste of our time. We should spend our days amazed by what God has done and what He has given. While there will always be plenty more, He has promised us eternity to enjoy them.