The world’s oldest profession isn’t prostitution. It’s advertising.
Genesis 3 is the story of a snakish advertiser who creates a desire for something that was really nothing at the cost of everything. And we’ve been chasing after empty dreams ever since.
The American “right” of the “pursuit of happiness” encourages this chase after a happiness that is undefined and never caught, always eluding us. Because this pursuit is at the heart of what it means to be American, it turns me into a consumer who falls for far too many advertisements offering me the happiness I so desperately desire.
The strange thing is that I am generally content with life as I have it until I come face to face with what I don’t have and who I am not. But when I am faced with people who do things I can’t do, have things I don’t have, and are the people I am not, new desires are created in me. Yes, created. (None of us knew we needed a smartphone until they were invented and we were told to want them, to need them. That is a created desire.) Advertising merely exacerbates this creation of desire.
My hearts is always vulnerable to envy. And coveting is my most basic sin: A desire to grab what I don’t have, based on a suspicion that God won’t give me what I want, what I need.
Psalm 73 dives into the depths of envy and is a companion for me when I find myself slipping into it.
The psalm begins with a statement of faith.
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart (Ps. 73:1).
Based on what follows immediately, this opening verse feels half-hearted. It may be, but it might also be a summary of what is true in spite of what the following verses express. In either case, it is a contrast to the rest of the psalm, where the psalmist admits to being anything but pure in heart, sullied by what he’s seen.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (Ps. 73:2-3).
I coach highly skilled volleyball players, and yet I still have to remind them to keep their eye on the ball. It seems like that would be a given. But every athlete is distractible. And so am I.
Psalm 73 is the first in a collection of eleven psalms written by Asaph which kicks off Book III of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89). Asaph is one of my favorite psalmists, marked by a humble, honest introspection that doesn’t avoid personal failing or theological struggle. And he’s right on point here, noting the danger of envy’s distraction.
Where I pretend I’m happy with what I’ve got and what I’m not, Asaph looks around and shakes his head. He’s not happy at all. Envy has blossomed in his heart and he knows it. He knows it got him distracted. He knows it caused him to trip over his own feet. He knows it almost had him wandering off course and over a cliff.
What I love about Asaph is his willingness to stop to look at what has happened to him, what has happened inside him. He asks himself, “What was it that caused this almost disastrous descent into envy?” It’s not enough to have escaped it. He wants to understand it. So, he digs deeper.
They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from common human burdens;
they are not plagued by human ills (Ps. 73:4-5).
I live in Bend, Oregon. It’s an amazing city tucked into the dry side of the Cascade Mountains and nestled up against the Deschutes River. It’s a paradise for outdoorsy people like my family and friends. And because it’s attractive to active, athletic people, it’s filled with them. And one of the most obvious things we noticed when we moved here a few years ago was how physically fit most people are — far more fit than in anywhere else we’ve lived, more fit than we are. They are Ps. 73:4-5 people.
And envy rose within us.
It became hard for my kids to make sports teams where the skill level is so high. It became hard to make friends with people who always have so many great opportunities to things other than be with us.
Envy always paints a pretty picture of those I long to be like, editing out the blemishes and making me feel poor in comparison.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
their evil imaginations have no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth (Ps. 73:6-9).
OK, so envy doesn’t edit out all the blemishes, just the ones in the parts of the lives of others I want for myself. To make things worse, envy exaggerates certain flaws these others have, tapping into feelings of injustice.
“Why do they have such a charmed life when they’re such terrible people?” I complain.
They wear their accomplishments like a string of pearls. They wrap themselves up in a careless, me-first approach to life and actually look good doing it. They have endless imaginations for how to make money and spend it on themselves, never paying attention to the family on the other side of the fence from their housing development which struggles to make ends meet in their meager double-wide.
The NIV notes an alternative to its rendering of the first half of verse 7. Instead of “From their callous hearts comes iniquity,” it could just as easily read, “Their eyes bulge with fat.” It’s such a vivid image. They are so lustful, their eyes are fat. They want everything they see. There are no limits to their desires and no resistance to the fulfilling of those desires.
Not only that, but they talk trash about God and no one holds them accountable. In fact, they seem to be taking over the whole world and no one can stop them.
There simply is no keeping up with the Kardashians or their ilk. They’ve left me choking in their dust.
Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.
They say, “How would God know?
Does the Most High know anything?” (Ps. 73:10-11)
The people who watch them are captivated by them.
Our culture watches the immoral celebrities of our time and drinks down their lifestyles, lapping it up like a dog, thinking, “They have everything and God doesn’t seem to care at all how bad they are? Why do I even try? Why not do what they do and get away with it too?”
Asaph sums all this up in verse 12:
This is what the wicked are like —
always free of care, they go on amassing wealth (Ps. 73:12).
Not only do the objects of my envy look like they get away with it, I seem to suffer for doing good. Not only do I envy what they have and what they do, I envy their ability to flaunt God without consequence.
Having exaggerated the success of those I envy, I also exaggerate my struggles. They are “always” free of care, while I am afflicted “all day long” and “every morning.”
Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
and have washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been afflicted,
and every morning brings new punishments (Ps. 73:13-14).
In every age, there have been the seemingly untouchable elite. But in no age has there been more ability to gawk at them, seeing stories about them at the grocery store newsstand and filling our newsfeeds online. There needs to be a basic wariness of this inundation while making sure it doesn’t cover over the smaller envies of daily life which have been common to all people of all ages.
Seeing his envy for what it is, Asaph is grateful of one thing: He didn’t talk with anyone about how his envy made him feel, for it might have undermined the faith of others.
If I had spoken out like that,
I would have betrayed your children.
When I tried to understand all this,
it troubled me deeply
till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny (Ps. 73:15-17).
As is seen elsewhere in the Psalms, worship reorients the imagination. Worship reinserts God into my often godless, atheistic imagination. And when God is reinserted, I see things from a different angle.
There are two main things Asaph highlights about how worship restores the imagination.
The first thing worship does to envy is put evil in perspective.
What seemed like health is disaster — the skinny model is anorexic. What seemed like getting away with it is the road to ruin — the dishonest businessman ends up in court. What seemed like happiness is merely disguised turmoil — the party boy is drowning his demons in alcohol.
Worship exposes my envies as lies. The people I envy aren’t real; they’re fantasies. Their lives are gilded in fool’s gold. They’re dreams that vanish with the morning light.
Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
They are like a dream when one awakes;
when you arise, LORD,
you will despise them as fantasies (Ps. 73:18-20).
Worship so completely exposes the reality my envies can’t see that I end up slapping my forehead at how easily I’ve been duped. How stupid of me!
When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you (Ps. 73:21-22).
Where envy focuses on others and what they have that I don’t have, worship focuses on God and what he gives us.
Thus, the second thing worship does to envy is renew the covenant by reminding me that I live in God’s hand.
Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever (Ps. 73:23-26).
I have the Presence of God. I have the protection of God. I have the wisdom of God. I have the good future God is bringing.
This life has meaning now because it is a guided pilgrimage to a great destination.
My eyes have been looking at the wrong things. Worship retrains my eyes on the truly substantial, the truly important.
You, God, are my goal, my home, my everything. All other pursuits are empty next to pursuing you. The stuff I envied that the wicked have is nothing. The health of the wicked I envied is nothing. Why? Because I get you, God, and I get you forever.
Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds (Ps. 73:27-28).
The wicked are “far” and I am “near.” They will die far from God, but I will live near to him. Instead of my envy, they deserve my pity. They deserve my compassion, for their over-inflated lives pop when pricked and fall to the floor like the pieces of a burst balloon.
And so as Psalm 73 ends, it leaves me in the roll of a storyteller. But worship has changed the story and it has changed me, the storyteller.
The real story of my life isn’t a story about what others have and I lack. It’s about what God has done for me and for all his people.