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

Envy is the most malignant passion in human nature. It’s like bone cancer in its crippling and deadly effects.

Envy leads to resentment, which eventually erupts into violence and rage, malicious mobs, cancel culture, and the elevation of dysfunctional political systems such as socialism and Marxism.

Envy implies dissatisfaction with God’s government, distrust of His justice, and doubt of His truth.

Envy is the greatest disease of our age. It is often confused with jealousy and covetousness, which have to do with wanting the possessions and privileges of others. Envy is much more insidious and deadly. Envy is the feeling that someone else’s having something is to blame for the fact that you do not have it. The principal motive is thus not so much to take, but to destroy. The envier acts against the object of his envy, not to benefit himself, but to cut the other person down to his own level or below.

A peasant in the Russian proverb who was offered one wish by a genie: “You may have anything your heart desires,” said the genie, “but your neighbor will receive twice as much as you do.” The peasant thought a while, and replied, “Make me blind in one eye.”

Envy is a cheat. It will destroy you and your culture much more than any enemies — imagined or real — will do. The biblical ethic of contentment does not mean a lack of drive or ambition. It does not mean apathy or inaction regarding the genuine injustice in the world. But it does mean that we are not revolutionaries. We look neither to the state nor to chaos to achieve personal fulfillment or social improvement.

The politics of envy and guilt is nothing other than class hatred and war. It is a blight on the soul, a rottenness eating at the foundations of culture. No society can long survive it: the nation that fails to overcome it through faith and obedience will fall. It reduces man to impotence and frustration; the man who succumbs to it is rendered unable even to pray. And that, assuredly, is the sociology of Satan. It is but a step away from hell.

Envy destroys the man who commits it. He does not work for the future and the glory of God. He cannot fulfill the purpose for which he was created. His frustration increases: he can’t enjoy what he has, for he is eaten up by what others have or, when he turns the envy in upon himself, by what others do not have. We should take the verse literally to some extent: envy has very serious physical consequences. Because man is a whole person, God’s curse on sin affects the whole man. You can quite literally be eaten up by envy.

More than this, envy is a rot on the foundations of society. If the cultural ethic is the destruction of anyone who owns something that others don’t own, the result is chaos. And if you are fearful of your neighbors’ envy, you won’t produce. Success and productivity become dangerous, and the whole culture declines. A civilization dominated by envy has rottenness in its bones: it is doomed to extinction. “Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Proverbs 27:4)

We are witnessing the wholesale use of the politics of envy in an unprecedented manner. Envy is being used to manipulate the object of envy into feeling guilty for being envied. He is made to believe that he really is responsible for the sufferings of others, that his wealth is actually a cause of poverty in other people. When envy is so pervasive in society, when it is positively encouraged by our leaders — and preachers in particular – we turn the envy back on ourselves and feel guilty for what we possess. A central motive of socialistic reformers is to cause an orgy of self-flagellation among property owners.

The envious man does not stop at merely bewailing the “fact” that the rich are to blame for the plight of the poor. He nurtures this hatred of his enemy. Regardless of his own advantages, he cannot bear to think of the object of his envy enjoying anything.

Envy and Malice are inseparable because the envier’s goal is destruction.

Envy is nowhere more clearly witnessed than in the “cancel culture” movement. At the root of this envious cancer is the concept that ideas, institutions, and people of the present as well of the past must be overturned and dethroned from legitimacy and acceptance in society, so as to expunge the injustices, cruelties, and insensitivities existing in current life and lingering over from history.

The tearing down of statues, demands for removing from buildings and other monuments the names and imageries of various people, and the ostracizing of certain individuals, living or dead, who are accused of and condemned for racist, sexist, and other politically incorrect words or deeds at any time during their life, is the main platform of the politics of guilt and envy.

And it is this envious, destructionist mentality, nursing itself on the notion that ‘ your wealth is the cause of my poverty,” that is the basic ethos of socialism. For socialism does not — and cannot– build up capital. It seeks only to expropriate or destroy the capital of others.

Winston Churchill wrote that “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Socialism is institutionalized envy. Socialism was once proclaimed as a way to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Almost everyone knows today that socialism makes most people poorer. Yet socialistic legislation still appeals to millions of voters all over the world. They would rather see most people poorer under socialism than see most people wealthier under a free market system. They resent the rich far more than they resent poverty. They resent the idea that some people have more wells or better wells than others.

Gary North stated the truth when he said, “The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: ‘Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.’ It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

Professor Anne Hendershott asserts that, “When toxic envy grows unchecked, it will inevitably destroy an individual, a family, a society even a civilization. In our day, envy has reached its tipping point, fueling acts of anger, violence, and revenge in America s cities and corporate boardrooms.

In her timely and brilliantly written book, The Politics of Envy, Professor Henershott argues that the political class, social media, and advertisers have created a culture of covetousness by relentlessly provoking us to envy others and to be envied. The result is not surprising: a deeply indignant and rapacious generation that believes no one is more deserving of advantages and rewards than they.

We close with a few of the many verses of scripture that warn of the dangers of envy:

Proverbs 3:31: Do not envy the oppressor, And choose none of his ways;

Proverbs 23:17: Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be zealous for the fear of the LORD all the day;

Proverbs 24:1: Do not be envious of evil men, Nor to be with them;

Proverbs 24:19: Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the wicked;

Romans 1:29: being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil mindedness; they are whisperers,

Romans 13:13: Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.

James 3:14: But if you have bitter envy and self seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.

James 3:16: For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

1 Peter 2:1: Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,

Believer, keep a check on ENVY! It is deadly! Pray for the exposure and expulsion of the spirit of envy from the “high places” this satanic stronghold has on our land. Pray for the gospel to begin to be declared more freely, fully, and fruitfully in our hearts, homes, and houses of worship, education, and government. And all of this for the spread of the fame of Christ’s name!