I rolled up to a red light behind a car with a license plate that read: NVMYTC.
With only seconds remaining before the light turned green, I set about decoding the cryptic message on the license plate. Was it an acronym? No Valley Minnesota Your Total Carnage? That couldn’t be it, could it? Curses! Just a few seconds left!
Oh, but look! It’s a Scion brand car, specifically a “tC.” It’s belongs to the driver, who could fairly claim that this was “my tC.”
Envy My tC? That’s it! Green light! Go! Go! Go!
That brief minute of pretending to be the star of an espionage film in which the fate of the world rested on deciphering a personalized license plate having now been exhausted of all of its dramatic tension, I was left to ruminate over any possible theological implications of the tag. See how productive I am when I’m driving? Most people just crank on the AC and dial up Bieber on the radio, but not me! My air conditioning is broken, and my radio would quickly break, too, if I played Bieber on it, because I would hit it. Instead, I thought about that license plate.
Envy my tC? “Hey world: I want you to envy my new car.” It occurred to me how funny (to me) it would be if, at the next light, I smashed into the back of her car and, as we exchanged insurance numbers, I explained: “Look, you asked me to envy your car. So, I did. That’s why I hit it.”
See, that’s what envy can lead a person to do. The word means “discontent over the success of another person.”* It makes you want that success for yourself, because it should be mine,
and why should you get it? You’re no better than me! In fact, you probably cheated to get it!! (pause here for fist-shaking and nonsensical gurgling)
I was in no way envious of the girl’s Scion tC, but I have been envious before. It’s the most embarrassing of the 7 Deadly Sins, I think. Pride and Lust can both be invested with a certain amount of (false) dignity; Sloth gets away with appearing harmless; we forget about it. Wrath fools men into thinking it’s no more than a mode of expression, useful for highlighting an important point—broken furniture and shattered relationships are just unfortunate side effects. Greed is good, like Gordon Gekko said. You need it to get ahead, right? And Gluttony? What’s wrong with that? Are you saying the Triple Sized Chili-and-Bacon Ox Burger With Cheese Fries and a Stunningly Large Coke is gluttonous? What, are you stupid?
But Envy? Gross. Nobody will admit to real envy. C. S. Lewis wrote that it was Pride that was the sin “which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and of which hardly any…imagine that they are guilty themselves.”^ I don’t doubt it, yet I would say that in the 21st century United States it is Envy which more closely matches that description.
So, how’s that for an open-ended blog post? Any thoughts, anyone? Which Deadly Sin takes the cake?
*paraphrased from Fr. Hardon’s Catholic Dictionary
^from Mere
Christianity, III, 8.
Man! I’m scratching my head, this is very open ended and tough to nail down…As far as 21st Century America I think it would be appropriate to examine WHAT motivates our sinning. A human being is capable of envying many different aspects of life, but I do believe our country’s biggest concern is our (collective) burning desire to attain more and more material, physical, tangible things. It drives many to Greed to want so much, to Envy of what they don’t yet have, and even to Pride of what they do have.
I think I’ll go out on a limb and say that if we can be satisfied without relying on so many different technologies to make us happy or entertained, and function happily without the use, or rather overuse of medicines, then maybe we could find comfort with our position in life. Maybe even happiness for those who seemingly have more than us. Seems the cause for many sins arises from people discontented with their own lot in life.
What of the envy when one goes backwards? There is the pride of the moment lost in the humilty when even the luxury of giving is gone. Not that in a moment of good times did you think your hand would be held out and others would need to help your desperate way. Nor could the imagination touch the thought of experiencing true envy.
Envy in moments like this can bring you to the sheer joy of gratitude. So can vice be transformed into virtue? If so, then any deadly sin may transform the soul for heaven, but only when we freely choose it.
I’d have to go with pride. It seems to cause the greatest difficulty in surrendering all we are and all we have.
Spaugh–
Yep, I’m with you, I think pride is the worst. I just don’t think many in the U.S. feel embarrassed by it, you know? Like greed, it is often thought of as a necessary component for being a confident, successful person, and pride’s opposite, humility–genuine Christian humility–is what only lame-o, ineffectual people embrace. Admitting to envy, on the other hand, would be admitting that someone “beat” us by obtaining something we don’t have.
You’ve got a good point there! And I have to agree with C.S. Lewis as well, I believe Pride is the only sin that would lead someone to cheat at solitaire….talk about gross!
An important distinction (which you’ve pointed out in your post here) is that envy or covetousness is that wanting to take from someone else or reduce them while you gain. So seeing a new product and saying “That looks really good! I want that!” and then working to achieve it isn’t inherently bad, but like you said, wrecking into that tC because you’re jealous of it would be.
I don’t know what the “worst” sin is, but it seems like they all stem from selfishness and immaturity, and we all have plenty of that to go around.
Right on.