Envy

As I think about the world today I see a generation that is rising up as a generation that believes in community. There is a sense in which we are realizing the importance of community and trying to learn what it looks like to have that. There are so many different ways of being in community with all of the different technological advances, but there is also a drive for it. The only problem with this is that I believe that envy is the number 1 struggle in our generation.

It seems that almost everybody struggles with wanting something someone else has or simply wants to be like someone else. Envy is everywhere. It is the girl that wants to be pretty like someone else, the guy who wants to be the "cool" kid, or the person who turns on any channel and sees someone who must be living the "good life" because they are an actor/actress and they want that. So here is the problem, this sense of community and unity in this rising generation is actually feeding this envious tendency. When we are in close community with others we begin to see what others have and can do and desire to have and/or do whatever that is. Envy is becoming the enemy of community. We have this drive to be together which helps to propel us into a situation that could cause us to become envious, and when we do become envious it drives a wedge between us and the people we desired community with in the first place.

Please do not hear me wrong, I love community, and the heartbeat of unity that is gaining traction is absolutely astonishing. What I am saying is that envy will be its downfall if we do not deal with that first. Unity can only be attained when everyone desires to come together, not become each other; that is uniformity. We are destined to be different, designed for uniqueness. But a lot of us are not comfortable with being that person. We see someone else we would rather be and therefore try and change. We have to be willing to let go in order to be the very person we were designed to be. This will in fact foster the ability to come alongside others in order to do something great.

Community and unity can and will allow us to do something great, we just cannot let envy stand in the way.