Envy is an insidious sin. And yet we don’t preach about it. We don’t warn of it’s dangers. Instead, we let it have its reign in our culture, because it drives our economy. Watch the commercials on prime-time TV. What is at the heart of every single one? Is it not envy? Is it not the lie that “You deserve this new thing. You’ve worked hard. Why shouldn’t you have what others have?”

There is a sin that nobody in our world really wants to discuss. It’s the fashionable sin, that fuels our great social movements and has become an engine of our politics.

It’s the sin of envy. We love to talk about greed. I mean if you google the word, “greed” you’ll get a thousands sermons, news articles, political speeches, blog posts, etc. We assume that anyone who is wealthy is greedy, simply because we attach greed to success as if the poor can’t have bad attitudes about money.

Now, to be sure, greed is a horrific problem. And there are some in positions of power and wealth who have money as their god. But greed’s cousin, envy, is just as powerful a master, only it is disguised in more noble clothing. Envy masquerades as populism. Just listen to some of the ways we talk today. If a certain CEO makes a lot of money, we call it injustice because WE can’t have it. If a politician is in a position of power, we hate him because he is where he is and I am where I’m at. If a popular pastor gets more popular, we have to go digging for doctrinal sins to discredit him and thereby bring him to our level. We can’t abide someone else having something we don’t have.

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