PRIDE AND ENVY
Sunday evening Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Mustang, OK
Father Thomas Boyer
Father Thomas Boyer
March 6, 2016
Reading
1 (Sirach
10 12-18, 22, 26)
“A reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes also called the Book of Sirach.
“A reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes also called the Book of Sirach.
The first stage of
pride is to desert the Lord and to turn one’s heart away from one’s Maker.
Since the first stage of pride is sin, whoever clings to it will pour forth
filth. This is why the Lord inflicts unexpected punishments on such people,
utterly destroying them. The Lord has turned mighty princes off their thrones
and seated the humble there instead. The Lord has plucked up the proud by the
roots, and planted the lowly in their place. The Lord has overthrown the lands
of the nations and destroyed them to the very foundations of the earth.
Sometimes he has taken them away and destroyed them and blotted out their
memory from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings……The rich, the
noble, the poor, let them pride themselves on fearing the Lord. Do not try to be smart when you do your work,
do not put on airs when you are in difficulties. Better the hardworking who has
plenty of everything, than the pretentious at a loss for a meal. My child, be
modest in your self-esteem, and value yourself at your proper worth.”
The Word of the Lord.
Homily
When the church fathers made their list of
sins, pride was always at the top of the list because it was idolatry – the
first sin is the beginning of all sin. There are all kinds of ways to describe
the behavior that manifests pride. The proud are arrogant, haughty, conceited,
egocentric, narcissistic, insolent, presumptuous and vain, and way more
besides! We know when we are angry or greedy, but pride is more clever and
subtle. We are often unaware of pride. It
shows itself in secret: in secret contempt and self-righteous judgment; in
secret illegal and unethical behavior; in the smug attitude we have toward the
weakness and failure of others as well as in a sense of privilege which marks
our age so severely. The proud think they earn
things which they then possess because of something they have done. You see,
it’s all about them.
Pride easily finds a home among us because
our culture predisposes us to competition, and that’s a bad thing! “Pride must
be competitive, since it cannot concede first place to anyone even when its
real wants are satisfied.” The games and the competitive world of commerce in
which we find ourselves are natural breeding grounds for pride. “I’m number
one.” “I made it.” “It’s mine.” Now
there’s nothing wrong with being one unless you can’t stand being number two.
But the real problem here is the pronoun, that notion that it’s me, that I did
it.
Now, part of the problem is language. We no longer
use the word “pride” to only refer to idolatry. Today we sometimes use it
carelessly to mean “self-esteem” which is not necessarily a bad thing. We tell
our kids to take pride in themselves, to be proud of their work. We tell them,
I hope, that we are proud of them. The result is a kind of semantic switch that
gets this all mixed up in a kind of psycholinguistic soup. The result is that
feelings of guilt are no longer interpreted as messages from God or signs of
broken covenant. We are now allowed to think that it is a matter of low self
esteem. So, pump up the old feel – good ego, and I’ll get over the guilt. Then
the higher our self-esteem becomes, the more insulated we become from the pain
of broken relationships. When you start thinking that way, you’ll end up with a
moat around your soul, isolated, lonely, and distant from everything and
everyone beautiful which is just where the proud person is always found.
Lonely!
Perhaps the real truth is that the
excessively proud person is really not in love with themselves at all, at least
not in a healthy way, but actually suffers from the opposite malady. My
experience with the puffed up people is that they are in fact excessively
insecure. They are self-obsessed because they are always trying to prove
something. They look down on others because they never look up to themselves.
We hate our imperfect lives and feel powerless in the face of impossible
standards. These imperfections torment us, and our obsession with
self-improvement leaves little time or energy for meaningful relationships. It’s
Pride.
Now consider this: there is an answer to this
deadly sin that eats at us day in and day out. It is simple, and it stares us
right in the face, yet we do not recognize it. A more authentic and natural
love of self is how pride is disarmed: in other words, Truth! Now, loving
oneself is not the same as being in love with oneself. I am talking here about
a new virtue called: WORTHINESS. You see, a worthy person has nothing to prove
because worthiness cannot be earned. It can only be recognized. It is a gift.
Years ago, I went to summer school in New Orleans
Now, that’s the way it is with Worthiness.
You don’t have to order it, and you can’t do anything to earn it. It just
comes.
The Protestant work ethic that has so shaped
this nation demands that we earn everything, and that’s a set up for pride.
Worthiness at its core is grace. Like true
beauty, which is best described as the “effortless manifestation of inner
peace,” true worthiness is the effortless manifestation of inner gratitude. We
have forgotten that we are born good – at least I think that’s what we heard
God say when he looked at all of this! We may make mistakes, but we are not a
mistake. Imagine what this world would be like if more people felt not just
good about themselves, but worthy.
One of the most devastating and deadly
realties in American life is our obsession with physical beauty. We live under
an astonishing barrage of images whose message is, quite simply, “You don’t
look so good, don’t you wish you did?” Image is everything. Having a look is
not enough. One must have the look.
How else do you explain that plastic surgery is the fastest-growing form of
medicine? This is Roman culture, we are obsessed not with beauty and truth, but
with perfection.
So, this “worthiness” I’m proposing is really
just a new version of an old a trusted virtue: humility. The trouble is,
“humility” too has gotten a bad language twist, and too often we think it has
something to do with being soft and self-depreciating. That is ridiculous. To
be humble is not to put oneself down. In fact thinking too little of oneself is
also a manifestation of pride. The foundation of humility is truth. The sadness
here is that we fail to take truth seriously: the truth about our worthiness,
our goodness, and our inherent value and dignity. The truth is that God loves
us always and everywhere. That is grace unearned, undeserved, and the only response
is gratitude.
Silent Reflection
Reading
2 (James
3:14-18)
“A reading from the Epistle of James.
Anyone who is wise or
understanding among you should from a good life give evidence of deeds done in
the gentleness of wisdom. But if at heart you have the bitterness of jealousy,
or selfish ambition, do not be boastful or hide the truth with lies; this is
not the wisdom that comes from above, but earthly, human and devilish. Wherever
there are jealousy and ambition, there are also disharmony and wickedness of
every kind; whereas the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially
something pure; it is also peaceable kindly and considerate; it is full of
mercy and shows itself by doing good;
nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it. The peace sown by
peacemakers brings a harvest of justice.”
The Word of the Lord.
Homily
I had a terrible time choosing scripture to
lead us into this reflection. There is so much to draw from I finally settled
on the letter of James simply because of time. Yet you might think about Cain
and Able, about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, or about the account of
the relationship between King Saul and David as it deteriorates. And then there
is that wonderful story of King Solomon and how he exposes the envious impostor
who would allow the baby to be split in two when the real mother would not.
Then, there are the two brothers of the prodigal father who stands between them
begging them to come into the banquet.
The roots of envy begin early in life. From
childhood we are compared to others. Our value as individuals is measured by
how much dumber or smarter, uglier or more beautiful, weaker or stronger,
poorer or richer we are than our peers. Competition, as I said earlier: it’s
killing us. These are deadly sins. We begin to interpret our lack of what
another person possess as somehow indicative of our lesser worth in general.
“One of the destructive forms that Envy takes today is the widespread
assumption that everyone should be able to do and experience and enjoy
everything that everyone else can do and experience and enjoy. That thinking is
the beginning of Envy. The idea that we are all equal has been perverted into
the idea that we are identical; and when we discover that we cannot all do and
experience and enjoy the things that others do and experience and enjoy, we take
our revenge and deny that they were worth doing and experiencing and enjoying
in the first place.” The result is that
we make no place for the unique for what is rare and cannot be imitated since
we would then not be able to achieve it. We end up unable to admire, respect,
or be grateful for what is more noble, more lovely, or greater than ourselves.
We must pull down or put down what is exceptional. So, envy is not just
grieving because of another’s good which is an element of pride; but envy grieves
because the good in another diminishes one’s own self. It’s no sin to recognize or even feel badly
that you lack something someone else has. It is a sin when envy makes us wish
the other did not have it at all.
Dejection is a striking symptom of envy. Bitter
regret over what we cannot have is envy. That bitterness leads to chipping away
at the reputation of another. Pointing out their faults becomes an escape from
the dejection. It is a spiteful malignancy. It is an ugly effort to level the
playing field or bring another down because we are not up. The envious are
completely without gratitude. The envious see themselves as “losers.” Again,
competition makes winners and losers. There is something about competition that
dooms those to failure who judge themselves by looking at others. There are two
assumptions: that everyone begins with an equal chance from the starting line,
and that the rules of the competition are fair at every stage. These conditions
are unrealizable, which is the flaw in the idea that there is equality of
opportunity.
Someone once said: “Imitation is the best form
of flattery.” I think that idea leads to phony and empty pretense. Admiration
or Emulation is what is called for, and it is the surest antidote to envy. The
attitude: “If I can’t have it, I don’t want anyone else to have it” is the
heart of darkness. It is the loser’s emotion. It is an irrational quality when
there is a better way, a lively virtue, a more noble human response: Emulation.
To be in the presence of excellence, virtue, bravery or enlightenment does not
always produce feelings of sinful envy, or even disappointment that we failed
to reach such a high mark. Sometimes we just wonder how that excellence was
acquired, what part of it might be available to us or how we might be more like
the one we admire!
Imitation is a counterfeit form of emulation.
Imitators do not take the time and energy required to learn what constitutes
the soul of those they admire. They merely rifle through their bag of tricks,
confusing technique with essence. Dressing like your hero, even talking like
him, does not make you, in any sense, heroic. In fact, that sincerest form of
flattery nonsense is just that. Imitation is hazardous to your soul.
Have you ever noticed in the New Testament
that more people get mad over God’s generous treatment of those who do not
deserve it than they do over God’s harsh treatment of those who do? That parable of the folks hired at different
times of the day and then all paid the same is the perfect example of envy at
work. The parable speaks of our inability to calculate the mercies of God.
Human nature leads us to think that other people are always getting more than
they deserve, while we assume that our rewards are just compensation.
What would happen if, instead of sinful envy,
the workers actually sought to emulate the owner? That is, you know what Jesus
was always doing. He never told people what to believe. He simply showed people
what to do, and then asked them to go and do likewise. So, the eleventh-hour
workers could be grateful for their good fortune and model their behavior after
that of the owners. Having received beyond merit, they could choose to be
generous beyond deserving. At the very least, they would buy the first round of
drinks.
Envy is always about power. Emulation is
about goodness. In the end, the simple test of determining if the envy we feel
toward another might be redeemed is to ask: “Would I like to be more like that
person? Or do I wish that person would fall from grace? If envy drives us to
hate someone or to wish someone harm, then it’s deadly indeed.
The world is starved for heroes, and we have
settled instead for celebrities. Celebrities are the creature of an envious
age. We ascribe no virtue to them. We never think of them as wise or generous,
they are simply paid more than we are paid. In envy we erect them, for awhile
let our envy prey on them, and then in our envy we destroy them. When we are
asked to name the people who have made a difference in our lives, we almost
always name a teacher, a family member or a close friend. These people did not
make us jealous. We wanted to emulate them, even surpass them. When parents
talk about wanting things to be better for their children than they were for
them, they are not just talking about money. They want their children to be
more, to feel more, to live more. Nothing pleases a real parent like having a
child who actually excels over them in all these ways. Envy is a secret thing
that makes us bitter, lonely, mean and petty. It never allows us nor motivates
us to do better nearly as much as it wishes others to do worse. This malice and
evil-mindedness easily and quietly takes possession of us and hardens our
hearts. Yet, gratitude and admiration, contentedness and joy at another’s goodness
will set us free.
