It’s healthy to be content,
but envy can eat you up.
—Proverbs 14:30
Covetousness made God’s Top Ten—the tenth commandment is: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex 20:17).
Envy is a blood-relative of covetousness. It causes wars, family feuds, fractured friendships, media meanness, fraud, betrayal, and political stalemate—and that’s just the short list.
“Do you know where your fights and arguments come from? They come from the selfish desires that war within you. You want things, but you do not have them. So you are ready to kill and are jealous of other people, but you still cannot get what you want. So you argue and fight” (Jas 4:1–2).
Envy is a cancer that will metastasize
until it totally consumes you.