In our morning class, we have been using Thoughtful Christian materials on the traditional seven deadly sins. OK, if you did not go to Catholic school and have them committed to memory they are: gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, anger, envy, and  pride. We are using them as convenient diagnostic devices to examine how sin has a way of infecting our lives. They are certainly convenient categories to examine one's own life and one's own spiritual path and progress. this is a difficult task when advertising feeds on envy as its driving force in its perpetual push toward consuming new goods.
 
Since we just worked with it, let's look at envy. Envy is all about things or qualities  possessed by another. Jealousy is more about people, to me. Jealousy seems to be more about fear of losing what one has, instead of being resentful of what others have. Envy resents what others possess (it should be mine), but misses one's own possessions and achievements as worthy of celebration.

I must admit that I am interested in what drives the seven deadly sins, what are the engines behind them. My old pastoral care teacher, Donald Capps, linked them to the different stages of life posited by the psychologist Erik Erikson. He places envy's origin with the school age issues of industry v. inferiority. School is where we learn the value of work and effort. It is also the place where we see that work alone is not the answer for some deficiencies. We see that there are better-looking, smarter, faster, friendlier people out there. Admiration of those traits can mutate into envy.

Envy seems to be directed at particular things, people or traits, rather than the open-ended thirst for more that is greed. It is destructive to the soul in a variety of ways. Envy wants the things possessed by someone else to be taken from them. Why? They don't deserve it; they should not have it, but I, I, should. Envy wants to drag others down to our level of felt deficiency. So, envy keeps us from rejoicing with others, but it does allow us to rejoice in a downfall, instead of feeling compassion. I distinguish it from jealousy in that I tend to associate jealousy with people more than things. Jealousy seems to me to be about the fear of losing something or someone in one;'s orbit, but envy looks outside one's orbit.

Maybe the best literary view of the effects of envy is Gollum in The Lord of the Rings series. Envy has deformed him from the inside out, so that he has become twisted and torn asunder.
Biblically, look at Saul and David. Saul was both envious and jealous of David, no? Were the religious leaders envious of Jesus? Were not the brothers envious of Joseph's coat? In these cases, envy ends in plotting the murder of those whom envy spies.

Capps sees envy being  countered by a sense of competence and the self-esteem bolstered by competence in the face of seeing others with greater skills. Security in one's being and skills closes the yawning hole that is envy. Traditionally, acts of love and kindness were proffered as the antidotes to envy. Instead of the closed fist of taking, we open the hand in giving. A gift honors the recipient instead of resenting them. If we can add to what they have, the resentment can fade. Acting generous starts to create generous feelings. The mutual respect of the gift then affects the way we look at others and how we view ourselves. The gnawing coveting fades into appreciation and admiration.We then start to realize that we are accepted by God the giver of all good gifts, including our very selves. We start to accept that we are good enough, good enough to give and receive love.