Reflections On Covetousness: "Why Not Me?"

You shall not covet (Exodus 20:17)

I commiserated the other day with my Catholic friend Tom, a man who is so devout in his faith that he once tried to get me to convert to Catholicism so I could be a priest.

Tom goes to Mass faithfully, but he goes alone. His wife ridicules church attendance, which she assumes is an attempt to earn brownie points with God. She blames God for screwing up her life. Tom's daughter says, "If Mom's not going I'm not going either!" and he figures it's futile to try to force them.

"Don't misunderstand me," Tom says, "I love my wife" - and then he does what I always used to do with my first wife: he lists the things he's grateful for. "She doesn't cheat on me. She's not an alcoholic." (I used to say, "She doesn't nag me. She doesn't spend wildly.")

"But," Tom says, and then he tells me his marital sorrows. She rarely has sex with him. Though she does not have a paying job she refuses to do any housework like cooking or cleaning or laundry. (When Tom comes home from work his daughter is waiting for him to make them something to eat.) Meanwhile his wife devotes enormous amounts of time and energy to a charity that is costly to run but that brings no money into their financially troubled household.

Tom loves God, and he knows that he must do his Christian duties in the context of a marriage that is less than satisfying. I sent him this quote from C. S. Lewis: "[A man's marital headship] is most fully embodied...in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness."

One of my greatest pleasures is boasting about the delightful woman I am married to now, but I try to be careful about indulging this pleasure before Tom. I know how it hurts to hear of others' exaltation in areas where we have pain. I have felt that hurt, even though I know that it is wrong to begrudge another man his happiness, and that Christians must obey the commandment "rejoice with those who rejoice." (Romans 12:15). But I am weak, and prone to covetousness, and am capable of asking ungodly questions like "How come he's got such a good wife?"

Some years ago after the fourth or fifth Harry Potter book came out I heard about a writer of children's fantasy literature who addressed a conference of librarians. He said, "We who write in this genre are asked all the time what we think of J. K. Rowling and Potter mania. I can sum up my response in three words." He paused, stepped to the side of the podium, raised his eyes and hands heavenward and shouted, "WHY NOT ME??????"

The "Why not me?" question is a natural one and occurs to us in all kinds of circumstances. A pastor friend of mine was enduring hostile opposition from his congregation some years ago, and he confided to me (in good humor, but showing some wistfulness), "Why are they doing this to me? There are pastors out there who are lazy or dishonest or addicted to porn but they get love and loyalty from their congregations. I'm running a clean program and get all this nastiness!"

I used to ask the "Why not me?" question a lot in my first marriage, though never aloud, and never even verbalized internally quite that way. But the thought was there. Countless times I turned off Christian radio in anger as some fool (yes, some fool) told me how I could have a new wife by Friday, or how my wife would be transformed if only I would learn to speak her love language, or how if I would only do this one thing my wife would loooovvvve me. Morons. Bunch of morons.

Compounding my grief was the fact that perhaps the happiest marriage I knew was two people who married many years ago at 17 because the young woman was pregnant. Wait a minute - they're supposed to be broken up by now, whereas I, who prayed for my future spouse, who sought the Lord's leading, who asked others to pray, who maintained my virginity, who got pre-marital counseling and who married a godly missionary - I'm supposed to be the one with a model marriage! How in the world did I wind up with the apostate lesbian? And what am I supposed to tell young people about what I've learned from my experience? "Well, kids, don't expect great results from the 'prayer and purity' route. Tried it. Who knows, I might have been better off getting some girl pregnant when I was a junior in high school like my friend over there."

I know that's wrong of course. That's the cynicism talking. And what fuels such cynicism is not mere reality but reality plus covetousness - the sin of desiring what others have, and thinking, "That really should belong to me rather than them."

Covetousness is an evil way of thought that often grips people who by God's grace are able to sidestep most other sins. It afflicted St. Paul more than any other temptation. In Romans 7 Paul bemoans his spiritual indiscipline, saying, "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:14-15, 18-19). What sin had Paul been committing? The only sin he actually refers to in this text is that of covetousness: "I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.' But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire." (Verses 7-8).

I think I know why Paul pinpointed covetousness as his spiritual bane rather than some other disobedience. The fact is he was innocent regarding nine of the ten commandments! He never committed adultery, or testified falsely, or stole anything. As a good Pharisee he never took God's name in vain, or made graven images, or violated the Sabbath. As for murder, though he did persecute Christians before he became one himself, that was more a matter of fatally misguided zeal than homicide per se.

But he was a coveter (im)pure and simple, and he couldn't shake it. A drunk can give up liquor and a rogue can give up seduction and a thief can give up greed, but it takes a profound work of grace for an envious man to give up asking "Why not me???" St. Peter himself had to learn not to ask that question when it appeared his fellow apostle St. John would not get his life cut cruelly short by martyrdom (John 21:18-22). "Hey - how come I get crucified while he gets to lounge on a beach sipping tequila?" Don't even ask, Peter.

The tendency in Paul to reflect on unworthy people getting better treatment than he (a reflection which, if indulged and cultivated, becomes covetousness) shows up in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12. There Paul vents frustration over the fact that some Corinthian parishioners seemed to dismiss him contemptuously while they bowed in servile humility to pompous jerks who exploited them. He writes, "You tolerate it if anyone enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that! ...I have not been a burden to you...Did I exploit you through any of the men I sent you? I urged Titus to go to you and I sent our brother with him. Titus did not exploit you, did he? Did we not act in the same spirit and follow the same course?" (2 Corinthians 11:20-21; 12:16-18)

You can see Paul's outrage over the unfairness of it, and how easily he might take the next step saying, "Give me the esteem you give to him! It's only right that I get what he's got. And I won't be happy till I get it!" That's covetousness.

By God's grace I no longer covet other men's marital happiness. How can I? I have the best wife in the world. But the deep-rooted sin of covetousness has not left me any more than it left my apostolic namesake in Romans 7 - it has just found other opportunities to glow red. I'll confess to you how I failed in that just this past week.

My younger son is an atheist comedian who occasionally writes things that show contempt for the sermons I have preached, the churches I have pastored, the upbringing I gave him, and the Christian faith in general. My sorrows about that know no bounds. Last week he published something that, thankfully, had no shots at Jesus or the Church or me. But he did link to the atheist website of his "fantastic" and "one-and-only" speech coach. My son extols his atheist mentor - but uses me as fodder for jokes that crack up people who do not fear God.

Of course I pray for my son all the time. But that is not what this is about - I'm writing about covetousness. Shall I tell you the thought that hijacked my mind for hours this week while I stood at my packing station at the warehouse putting things in bags and boxes? Here is what I thought about:

Some years ago I became acquainted with Simon (not his real name - I'm careful about things revealed to me in confession). Simon was a divorced single man, like myself, and involved in Christian ministry though never himself pastor. Unlike me, though, Simon had a charismatic personality, and he caught everyone's eye.

Simon's problem was that he had trouble keeping his pants on when with a woman. He'd feel bad about it though, "repent," dump the woman cold, and then go back and do it again. Among the things that distress me about this individual is that he has a lovely grown daughter who raves about what a godly father she has. She does not know what I know, has no clue what a skunk her father has been. And actually that is all for the best - if by now he is truly and conclusively repentant. Let her continue to honor him for all the good that she does know about him.

But you see where I covet. It is hard for me to dismiss the thought, Why is this man honored and I am not? How dare he garnish praise he has not earned! I have neither money nor influence nor a ministry nor esteem in the eyes of men - can't I at least be extolled by my son the way this creep is extolled by his daughter?

That is my confession to you. Yes, I am capable of thinking that way, I am still held captive at times by sinfully covetous thoughts that I know I must discard. I speak this frankly to you for two reasons: to inspire your prayers, and to awaken your conscience to a sin that might plague you too, if your nature is anything like mine. I know to my shame that the sin I have succumbed to this week will probably not be overcome on that great day when this particular temptation is removed. Though I will stop coveting the praise another man receives from his children on the day my son bows the knee to Jesus Christ and values me as he did his atheist mentor, the truth is, unless I repent, I will simply find something else about which to ask that infernal, self-absorbed, God-neglecting, God-forsaken question: "Why not me?"