Harmful to Your Health

Pr 14:30 ¶ A sound heart is life to the body, But envy is rottenness to the bones.

Doctors pretty well agree that taking care of yourself before you get sick is better than having to go to a doctor because you made yourself sick. And science has proved that stress actually lowers your body's ability to fight off disease.

An envious person will always suffer stress, because he'll always see someone who has something he wants. In the church, it could be a position of leadership that the envious person feels he should have. My own observations confirm that handing positions to these people in order to placate them is like handing territory to Adolf Hitler. After a while, he always wants more. Eventually, the person's ever-growing envy pushes him into positions he cannot handle, or it reaches the point that people are willing to fight him in order to keep him from getting more.

Job's friend, Eliphaz the Temanite, had observed that "... wrath kills a foolish man, And envy slays a simple one." Job 5:2 In addition to health problems, envy can push a person into foolish actions that get him into trouble.

What is "Envy"?

When the King James Version was translated in 1611, the translators used the word "jealousy" to describe a person who has something, but is fearful that someone else will take it away. Surprisingly, words, like "jealous" and "jealousy" are usually used to describe God. He has us, but He is afraid that He will lose us to something else.

However, God's Word gives far more attention to "envy" than it does to jealousy. The King James translators used "envy" to refer to a person who does not have something, but feels that he should have it. The envious person often regards himself as the victim of the person who has something. And God's Word describes envy as a more dangerous trait than jealousy.

Psychologists use these same two definitions to describe jealousy and envy. Envy carries two victims at a time: the person who is envious, and the person who is being envied. We'll be going into a study of how to deal with envy from both directions.

The Pastor's Family

The next part is based on psychology and experience, rather than Bible.

Some years ago, a Godly pastor made his son-in-law assistant pastor. The son-in-law quickly distinguished himself as a blatant incompetant in every area but one: holding on to power. He carefully crushed any successful teacher in their Christian school, as well as any successful lay person. If anyone did anything successful in the church, the son-in-law took charge, running it into the ground, but holding on to his power. The pastor co-operated fully, being cowed by threats of losing his daughter and grandchildren. After the two of them had run their once-successful church into the ground, they left, and the church recovered under another pastor.

Too many other Christians have told me similar stories: the pastor hires incompetant family members who then destroy anyone they see as a threat to their power. Sometimes, it is the pastor's wife, grasping all the pastoral authority she can. Sometimes his children get postitions in a Christian school or in the church.

Other times, it might be the principal, or it might be important people in the church who put their family members into unearned positions of authority. One Christian college president made his daughters professors as soon as they had received their bachelor's degrees.

There are always exceptions, but these cases pretty well produce situations in which any Christian blessed by God will be stopped by jealous and incompetant family members who hold leadership postitions. Sadly, the best thing to do when you see a Christian organization that is "family-owned and operated" is to go elsewhere.

Dealing with Jealous Authority

David had a problem dealing with King Saul. No matter how hard David tried to please him, King Saul remained jealous. But David did the best that he could. He played his harp to successfully drive the evil spirit away from Saul, until Saul tried to kill him for it. As commander of the army, David defeated the Philistines wherever he went, so Saul unfairly demoted him. Demoted to command of 1,000 men, David continued to defeat Saul's enemies.

At last David realized that Saul would eventually destroy him, so David fled. So David turned disloyal? No, David twice refused to kill Saul in delf-defense, and Ahimelech the priest told Saul that David was Saul's most loyal servant. Yes, David's ministry suffered. He fought against less enemies than he had before, and when Saul needed him the most, David wasn't there to prevent a massacre of Israel's army. But David went on to become a great king just the same.

The point? Sometimes, the best way to deal with jealous leadership is to leave peacefully.

Are You Great?

Around 1970, a high school student was running the largest church bus route in the world. When he graduated, he attended the college I attended. Other students had bigger bus routes, though, and another student becamse leader of the world's largest bus route, bringing in over 1,000 riders to church. Most Christians would respond with awe at the Godliness of these two, but both of them were eventually expelled for various offenses. How was this possible?

It is a common Christian error to believe that a person with a big ministry is automatically Godlier than a person with a small ministry. While it might be true, it doesn't have to be so. God is working out a plan to redeem His creation, and He uses people to carry out His plan. Saul was actually chosen as king because God's people had rejected God's plan, wanting a kingdom instead of being ruled by judges.

When God's plan calls for a large ministry in a certain geographical area, it doesn't prove that the Christians involved are spiritual giants. They might be, or they might have gifts and abilities that fit into God's plan. Your job, as a Christian, is to grow in grace and knowledge, and then to submit to whatever God tells you to do. If you do that, you are a spiritual success, regardless of what God calls you to do.

King Saul failed to acknowledge that God had called David to replace him. He might actually have discerned sins in David that would cause problems later, But his refusal to accept God's will for his own life produced the jealousy that eventually destroyed him.

Why Some Christians are So Great

Why didn't King Saul just accept God's will, make David king, and help David in any way that he could? One key reason is that Saul did not realize why he was such a good king: because God gave him the ability to be a good king.

1Co 4:7 ¶ For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

Was Saul a good king? 2 Samuel 1:23 tells us that "Saul and Jonathan were beloved and pleasant in their lives..." Saul did not take bribes or corrupt justice. He did not steal another man's wife, murder her husband, and provoke civil wars, as David would later do. But Saul made a key error in thinking that he was king because he was better than David. Saul was king because God made him king, and God had the right to give the kingship to somebody else.

"Covetousness" is wanting something that God doesn't want you to have. "Jealousy" is wanting to keep something that God doesn't want you to keep.

Saul's Jealousy

Saul was less astute than Jonathan, but more astute that young David. He appreciated David at first, but when he heard the song "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands," he discovered the key to successful jealousy:

The leader saw evidence that God had chosen someone else over him.

Saul understood that God was blessing David more than Saul. In fact, much of Saul's success was due to God's blessing of David. Although he wasn't sure at first, Saul rightly suspected that David was the king who would replace him. He unfairly demoted David, and David continued to excel in a lower position, gaining favor among the people. Whatever Saul did, he could not defeat God's plan to make David king.

So why didn't Saul just face the truth, as Jonathan had, and help David? Because...