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| Oedipus Rex |
Were
you ever envious of anyone when you were young? Who? Why? What is
your attitude when you see nasty people get what they deserve? What
should it be? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition,
page 1201).
Envy
and admiration are very different emotions. When we admire someone we
like them very much and wish them well. When we envy someone we tend
to dislike them and at a certain level wish them ill – wishing to
see them meet with their comeuppance and enjoying it when we hear
that they have been bereft of their advantages.
When
we see people we envy lose, our thinly cloaked elation shares much in
common with the attitude we have when we see nasty people get what
they deserve – we exalt in their misfortune.
The
Christian seeks to find what is in the best interest of others. The
vehicle for the exercise of this attitude derives from empathy. Thus,
even when we find that the misfortune of others is in some sense
just, we nevertheless temper our satisfaction with the knowledge of
the pain that is concurrent with losing. We can share short-term
grief with the loser even though we acknowledge the likelihood of
long-term benefits. That is, we recognize that the victim was guided
in their actions by their best lights. We feel sorrow when these best
lights prove fundamentally misguided and delusional. Such passages
are sad states in human experience and something to which we are all
vulnerable.
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