Note: The kindness of donors means so much to me. We continue to receive Debt Retirement Donations. Thanks to Monica Flinchum for her latest donation! We are now over $10,000 in cash and pledges toward our goal of $20,000. With this amount we can completely eliminate our debt on one of our houses. Debt Freedom is important for a charity like this one.
Now, to our subject
The Current Crisis in our nation is the deep division in our population. Much of it could be the direct result of one old, dusty sin called Envy. Men want to be women and women men in our day because they envy the opposite gender. One race is infuriated against another. The Haves hold contempt for the Have-Nots. The Have-Nots return their contempt with anger.
Does all of this come from Envy?
I think so, though I have learned not to think in absolutes so much. Envy may only be one symptom of the divisive illness from which we suffer. I admit Envy may not be the only source of the fever.
I still think it is a good place to start.
Envy is the hatred felt by the lesser loved.
Cain murdered his brother because Abel gave a more acceptable gift to God, Genesis 4. God gives consoling instruction to Cain but Cain cannot process God’s instruction because he feels himself the lesser love.
Joseph’s brothers feel incidental to their father. Genesis 37. They fear Joseph will get the greater inheritance from their father, Jacob. The sons of many mothers are able to unite for one cause; they fear and hate Joseph. Joseph does not help by telling them his vision of how they bow down to him. The many brothers are able to unite out of, well, um, Envy. In this case the consoling voice of God is in Joseph;s vision, but the brothers cannot process God’s purpose, which is to save the family and, so, the nation from the famine to come through Joseph. They feel themselves the lesser loved.
Jacob, the father of these misguided gaggle, knows about the hatred of the lesser loved. He himself is the greater loved between himself and his more manly twin, Esau. In fact, we read “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated,” Genesis 25, also Romans 9:11. Jacob haphazardly follows God during his life. His mistakes are often greater than his faith. His redeeming hope? His mother’s favor on him, through which God works out a (troubled) future for Jacob, who, literally, fleeces his father, sundering their relationship, fooling his brother (same result) and wrestles with God for which action he gets a hip problem and has to stay off ladders.
We should note the Biblical Hebrew word for hate used in relation to Esau actually means “loved less.” Our Calvinist friends must look elsewhere for a proof text. God loves Esau, as evidenced by Esaus’s successful life. God simply loves Jacob more for the purpose of establishing the Kingdom.
Still. Esau has Envy. Jacob feels the hatred of the lesser loved.
We could continue with Biblical stories of Envy as the hatred of the lesser loved. David and Saul anyone? I want to leave the illustrations just now, so we can look at how our Christ soothes the envious soul.
So, how does Jesus calm envy?
Jesus sees humans alike. Yes, he comes first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but He opens His work to foreign women, Roman soldiers demoniacs from Gadarene demoniac. Jesus has room for strangers, opponents and the mentally/emotionally challenged. Jesus has time and Jesus has room for the needy; all of us.
God opens the Kingdom to all who have been called unclean (Acts 10). God shows the militant apostle Paul the equality of persons in the Kingdom; there is no Jew no Greek, nor slave or free not male or female; you are equal in Christ Jesus, so Galatians3:28-29.
You are thinking now of the divisions in Christianity. I am saying these divisions are not the will of God but the result of our hardness of heart. Christian reunion ought to be a cause for each of us. We should not give in to the hatred of the lesser loved.
Since division is our cultural issue and since envy is the symptom of this disease, we ought to find a vaccine for envy. I suggest it would be Christ-like love.