The gluttonous eat, the lustful have sex, the slothful sleep, the angry blow off steam, the greedy accumulate, the prideful feel especially good about themselves. Sins aside, there is something that at least might look like an upside to six of the seven deadly sins. But what do the envious do?
Want. Seethe. Feel cheated and miserable because someone else has the very house, child, job, admiration they desire. But the truly envious don't stop there. If they can't have what you have, they want you to not have it, either.
"Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all," writes Joseph Epstein in the book "Envy." "Surely it is the one that people are least likely to want to own up to, for to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, small-hearted."
In 30 years of listening to clients, Salt Lake psychologist Mark Owens has never had anyone come in and say "I need help because of my problem with envy." Nearly ditto for longtime pastor Don McCullough, who is now president of the Salt Lake Theological Seminary.
"There aren't many people who seek pastoral care for envy," McCullough says. "It's one of those sins that people will once in a while confess, but they're often not troubled by it." Maybe that's because, unlike adultery or stealing, envy does not so obviously wreak havoc. "Envy is usually more subtle. It eats away in a quiet way."
As neo-conservative author and theologian Michael Novak says, envy rarely travels under its own name. People rarely say "I'm envious." They say, instead, "That's not fair," or "I also deserve," or "Why did he get the promotion when my work is clearly better?" There's an element of pride involved with envy, and some greed, and often anger as well — the three poisons, as Zen Buddhist Genpo Roshi of Salt Lake's Kanzeon Zen Center explains.
"It's the hidden emotion," says Epstein.
So hidden that we often aren't aware that envy might be the motive for those times when we are critical or dismissive of others.
Although it may seem like splitting hairs, most people argue that envy and jealousy are related but aren't twins. It's generally agreed that jealousy is about something (or, more likely, someone) you worry might be taken away from you, whereas envy is about something other people have that you want. Envy, says Epstein, is "usually less about what one lacks than about what other people have."
We generally feel more envious of people somewhat like us, rather than of famous people. Why is it harder if our best friend, rather than a stranger, wins a prestigious prize, asks McCullough. "Because I don't compare myself every day with people I don't know," he says. "I still want to be recognized in my little circle of life."
Envious people "take your success as evidence of their defeat," says Lloyd Steffen, professor of philosophy and religion at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. "It's really 'all about me,' " a kind of narcissism in which the envier feels slighted.
To envy is human, say psychologists and theologians. "If one says he's not envious, I would immediately begin to think about what he's not noticing," says psychologist Owens. Envy, at least the more minor forms of it, is "an inescapable dilemma, one we all have to struggle with," he says.
But there's a difference, says Susan Northway, between the fleeting envious thought that flashes through one's mind, and the more sinister self-pity — and worse — that envy can lead to. Northway, director of the office of religious education for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, quotes St. Augustine, who said that envy is the "diabolical sin" from which is born "hatred, detraction, calumny, joy caused by the misfortune of a neighbor, and displeasure caused by his prosperity."
As writer and theologian Dorothy Sayers once wrote: "Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level them down." At its worst, she said, envy is a destroyer — "rather than have anyone happier than itself, it will see us miserable together."
"I think when there's envy, if the person envied stumbles, there's a kind of glee," says Lehigh's Steffen. It's easy to be a friend to someone who is having a hard time, he adds. The true mark of friendship is feeling happy when a friend succeeds, especially at something you yourself have failed at.
Where does envy come from? Buddhists would say it's from our erroneous perception that we are separate from other people, what Buddhists call dualistic thinking.
Twentieth century psychotherapist Melanie Klein, author of "Envy and Gratitude," believed that envy was the first important dilemma human beings face, notes Owens, and that it began — as psychoanalysts are wont to believe about many things — at the mother's breast (or the bottle of formula).
"It begins with the growing realization that another — the mother — has it, she has control over it, and she's not you," Owens explains. As we grow up, we hopefully learn to tolerate the frustrations of not always having what we want, he says. Some of us will be more grateful, some more envious — and the difference may depend, in part, on an inborn temperament.
Salt Lake psychologist and Zen Buddhist priest E. Kay Barickman thinks the problem of envy stems from feelings of insecurity "and our belief that somehow we — as we are — are not enough, that we're not whole and complete as we are."
Envy is not the same as need, Barickman points out; to want food or shelter to survive is not the same as begrudging your neighbor because his daughter got into Harvard and yours didn't. And envy is not the label for the mother whose own child has died and who might therefore feel sad when she watches another mother hold a child. "That's grief," Barickman says.
Envy is comparing yourself against another and finding yourself come up short. "If you think there is nothing worthwhile about yourself, you'll see it in all the other people and wish you had it," she says. "That's a hard thing to chase for a whole lifetime." Typically we don't just envy one thing — which makes sense if we are coming from a place of "less than."
What makes envy a sin, says McCullough of the Salt Lake Theological Seminary, is that it expresses "an ingratitude with the blessings God has given me," and a discontent with "what God has made me." Low self-esteem, he says, "at its root comes from not trusting God's love for me. . . . It's a sin that flows from a lack of faith, from a lack of trust in the goodness of God to me."
The Catholic catechism, says the Salt Lake Diocese's Northway, "requires that envy be banished from the human heart." One remedy, she says, is to train oneself to be loving. Which sounds easy enough, until one is faced with the fact that someone else got the part you wanted in the school play.
The best path away from envy, say theologians and therapists, is to develop gratitude, on a daily basis. Gratitude for every thing you have, big and small. "And work on humility," says Northway. "Pray to let God's will work in your life."
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com