You can admire someone’s stuff, but it becomes evil when you plot to take it from him. When men conspire together to do that, it becomes government.
Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel explore the 7 deadly sins and their contrary cardinal virtues to kick off their twice-weekly show — The Virtue Signal. Access the full archive of this and dozens of other shows right here.
Video below hosted at Rumble.
28 replies on “When Envy Becomes Government: He’s Got Nice Stuff and I’m Going to Take It from Him”
Zo says nothing that we do is remarkable or worthy to win or make us deserving of Grace. It is clear that the religious world finds itself at odds with Catholics, who teach that salvation is attainable by a combination of faith AND works (Romans 3:28). You need BOTH. It is a very great distinction between Catholic and non-Catholic Christianity, almost universally observed. A Christian should be prepared in-season and out of season to produce fruit (Matthew 21:19), and the one to whom has received what is not a wage for work should consider such free graces like a loan, expected to be put to use (Matthew 25:14-30).
You won’t likely find a generous person that will frustrate the very young with this, however. Listen, there’s a lot of patience for those who are weak, for people who are short-sighted and self-centered. How often have you told younger persons to enjoy their youth while they can, before life expects more from them? It is the same with the spiritually mature. There is a stage of development where a soul learns by discipline and experience that proves self restraint and self denial can lead to greater personal yields. This is the seed of righteousness, which proves compassion and long-suffering cannot be outdone in their service to love.
Faith is determined by work, and your work will be proven by who pays your wages.
GREAT episode!
Bill nailed the difference between envy and desire.
Desire says, “What he’s got is nice, I want something like it.”
Envy says, “What he’s got is nice, I want to take it from him.”
And envy doesn’t even have to be over a genuine desire to own the thing envied — it can be expressed in a desire to deny the other person the thing they have.
Anyone who has siblings has probably experienced this. Sometimes children don’t even want a thing, but once they see their sibling with it, they want to take it away from them. Not because they really want the thing, but just out of a desire to tear down the other person.
Some people never outgrow that behavior. They grow up to be Democrat politicians.
The Best Virtue Signal Yet!
It’s important to remember what envy isn’t:
Envy isn’t desire. If I like my neighbor’s car, I can offer to buy it from him. In this case, I desired what he had, but did not seek to deprive him of it – but rather offer him something that I hoped was more valuable to him than the car.
Envy isn’t jealousy. Jealousy is guarding what YOU have; Envy is seeking to deprive another what they have. God is a jealous God because He doesn’t want someone trying to displace Him in our hearts. He is not an envious God, because we already belong to Him.
To me, covetousness is not just desire. Desire is “He has nice stuff, I want stuff like that.” Covetousness is “He has nice stuff and I want to take his stuff and have it for myself.”
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I remember hearing that the Hollywood standard of winning is that it’s not enough for you to succeed, your friends have to fail. No wonder Hollywood is so far left.
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Zo says it, but puts more words around it: All virtue is voluntary.
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More than any other single thing, what helped my work ethic and my attitude about working was the realization that nobody pays you to do something they would just as soon do themselves. Therefore any “employment” you have WILL be something that sucks too much for your boss to do it himself. Get over that.
I’ve been searching for 45 years for that employer who will pay me top dollar to stay home and snuggle with my honey, and would you believe it, I’ve never seen anybody hiring for that. Not one. Makes you want to despair, it really does.
But in fairness, it’s probably just as well. If I had been hired for that job, I probably would have been fired off it long ago… for working too much unauthorized overtime.
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Reality does wonders for killing off envy.
I’m in N. Dallas, and I’ve spent about 36 of the last 48 hours without power, in temperatures from 27 down to 3 degrees.
Stuff like this helps you re-focus your priorities. People working on the electrical grid are “essential personnel.” Everyone else is optional.
EVERYONE.
I would agree with you, except that there are a lot of people who look at what other people have and while they would not necessarily desire what they have, they no less feel deprived by not having it. I noticed my wife, years back, would often point to houses and lawns during drives and remark enthusiastically on them, using words like ‘wishing’ in her observations. I asked her if she thought the landscape had formed itself, the large trees implanted? Sometimes people don’t make an effort to improve their own lot, but stare with a kind of hunger at what others have. I would say that is covetous too. It need not be accompanied by envy to be covetous, but merely sloth and ingratitude. She has since changed this habit, to my shameful surprise.
We may not have what others have, but we have more than enough for our needs. I tell this last thing to my children, who often have a hard time with this one.
The Founders called the envious of their day “the levellers.”
Loved the Cold War, but this is the best series ever.
Bill’s question: “What do you do to make yourself grateful when you find you’ve fallen away from that; when you feel you’ve been wronged, or somebody got something that you deserved…..”
The answer: Prayer. Pray for that guy, pray for his happiness, pray for his success. It’s incredible how that simple act removes all manner of envy and covetousness.
That’s now the second time you’ve named Generosity as the missing Virtue. I’d be more concerned with Bearing False Witness.
Concur fully. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness should be considered the Prime Commandment, possibly even over against murder. For BFW is a form of cheating and denying reality. It is also cowardly. Something our opponents use against us constantly, relying on our good graces to let it pass unopposed, or that we don’t resist it as fully as we should. But as LG has said: Reality Is Not Optional.
BFW is also very destructive both physically and culturally.
Just as we are dealing with now, the lack of trust in our society has caused the breakdown of even the simplest of relationships. Whether you are discussing personal, professional, or even constituent to representatives, the lack of trust is counter productive to success.
BFW has become so normal, that the old classic of “The boy that cried wolf” one to many times before, is being played out in everything.
So no-one believes anything, therefore nothing is real and nothing is being responded to.
If everything is assumed to be a lie, then how could you protect yourself when a real hungry wolf comes knocking down your door?
Our culture has become one of not skepticism but denial. Sceptics use judgment and resources to determine if there is a wolf.
Denial is just closing ones eyes and saying the wolf is not there.
Bill, I agree we should always be thankful for what we have, but if we don’t complain and fight every perceived wrong, matters will only get worse.
Gratitude is an excellent motivator for defense; one of the most effective ways to steal other people’s most valuable property is to convince them it’s worthless or actually harmful. What they abandon is then free for the taking. The left has been pounding this message for generations now: surrender your rights and your liberty in exchange for our false promises of security and just equality of outcome.
I once read an interview with the late Richard Dawson in which he was asked why he left England for America. He responded that in in England when people saw someone drive by in a Rolls Royce, they thought that someday that person will be living like them, while in America the people think that someday they’ll be living like him.
Whew! For a second there I thought you were referring to Richard Dawkins. While Dawkins was born in 1941 he is not yet “late”.
I suspect most people do not contemplate increasing or decreasing their socio-economic status by more than one quintile. Those who succeed more than that are probably seeking some lesser goal and just exceeded their expectations. And those whose fortunes declined severely either could not believe it would ever happen to them, or made some serious error of judgement (criminal, emotional), or really just had some bad luck.
I worked with a guy who used to travel to his previous employer’s office in Stockholm. He used to take the engineers he met with there out to dinner at least once each visit, and they were so appreciative because, they said, they could rarely afford to eat out. These were engineers who, by Swedish standards, made a pretty good wage. However, a combination of high taxes and high cost of living made eating out at even modest restaurants a luxury.
I sometimes think about them when contemplating the general standard of living in the US.
It is truly disturbing to see the difference in these behaviors:
That person has something really nice, I wonder how hard I have to work to get something like that.
That person has something really nice, I will never have anything that nice. Therefore, I want to destroy it because no one should have anything I can’t have.
And the corollary:
That person has something nice, the government should make sure I have the same thing.
Great!! You guys keep getting better and better. Please keep it up.
You are confusing envy and jealousy! Envy says that I want a car like your. Jealousy say I want your car, and you can walk!
I always equated jealousy with control and ownership. Don’t look at my wife, she’s mine. (property).
They’re connected.
My husband speaks several languages so when his company brought some Russian engineers to visit he invited them home. We live in a nice middle class neighborhood and I was a little taken aback when the guys were bring shown around our house and one of them stopped at our sliding glass doors, looked out at our pool and said “you must be REALLY rich to live here”. I suppose I had never really thought about it before, our standard of living in the U.S. is head and shoulders above that of other countries. It made me much more appreciative of our opportunities.
“Equality of outcome”, the mantra of the leftist post-modern neo-Marxist, is the ultimate expression of envy. It is also ultimately totally destructive.
Our current system creates fat poor people with 55 inch TV’s and late model cars. “Equality of outcome” is an excuse to kill and eat the goose that lays the golden eggs.
See Bill’s video “Eat the Rich”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ&ab_channel=BillWhittle
Gratitude: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
U 2 brought tears to my eyes, thank u for your detection to the truth. It was refreshing.
Me too. There is something so beautiful about the truth.