Exploring the difference

Envy and greed have much in common. One way to explore the difference is through the lens of the two great commandments: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The first commandment teaches us to love our greatest good: the God who created us to share eternal life in the communion of the Holy Trinity. The second teaches us how to fulfill the first. We must love the neighbor we can see if we are to love the God we cannot see. In loving our neighbor, we love God.

How are we to love our neighbor? We love our neighbor as we love ourselves when we truly love ourselves, i.e., when we desire our greatest good. Therefore, we love our neighbor as ourselves when we desire our neighbor’s greatest good. In other words, the two great commandments serve to order our self-love (which the commandments assume).  

Greed, or avarice, cuts us off from our greatest good by attacking our relationship with God directly. Greed always wants to be more or to have more. It leads us to grasp at and cling to the things of this world, to substitute the creature for the creator in what becomes a base form of idolatry. Greed compels us to seek these things at the expense of our relationship with God.

Whereas greed distracts us from both God and neighbor, envy is very conscious of neighbor. Envy does more than coax us toward the idolatry of avarice or foster the desire to possess that which we perceive another to have. Rather, envy desires the wealth, status or power of another and wishes to deprive the other of what he or she has. As Aristotle wrote, envy is pain at the good fortune of others. Envy is resentful.

With envy, the love of neighbor is replaced by the desire for the neighbor’s misfortune. In direct opposition to the commandments of love, envy leads to hatred of our neighbor. As St. Paul so aptly described in his Letter to Titus, “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deluded, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful ourselves and hating one another.” (3:3) This makes envy deadly because it contradicts both of the great commandments: envy is hatred of our neighbor, which is hatred of God, which is ultimately hatred of self.

The remedy

The most effective antidote to envy is the very thing envy attacks: charity. The theological virtue of charity is the free gift of God given to us so that we may live in relationship with the God who is Love. Charity is the virtue by “which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.” (CCC 1822) So, we find the only sure protection from the certain death envy offers us in obedience to the two great commandments.

Commanded to love?

Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, writes that some say charity cannot be commanded because love is “ultimately a feeling that is either there or not, nor can it be produced by the will.” (16) In response, the pope asserts that love is not just a sentiment nor does God “demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing.” (17) Rather, God loved us first, which makes it possible for love to arise within us as a response.  

However, Pope Benedict explains that saying “yes” to the commandments of love is critical because it is only in service to our neighbor that our eyes are opened to what God does for us and how much he loves us. As the “love story” between God and us deepens, “God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.” (17)

Charity, then, is the best remedy against envy because where charity is, envy is not. In contrast to envy, charity “seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” (6)

THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER

Even if you’ve forgotten all of the Shakespeare you memorized for your 10th grade literature class, you're probably quoting him more than you realize! One phrase which first appeared in Shakespeare’s plays is the expression “green-eyed monster,” still commonly used to personify envy. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia refers to “green-eyed jealousy” in Act 3, Scene 2. Then, in Othello, Iago warns Othello:

“O beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” (Act 3, Scene 3)

Shakespeare didn’t distinguish between jealousy and envy here, but it’s important to note that envy is sometimes understood to be more malicious. Regardless, Iago has a point: envy and jealousy are injurious to the person who harbors them. Instead of coveting the good we see others possess or experience, we should praise God for it. By rejoicing in God’s goodness, we will experience joy ourselves. It’s worth the extra effort!