Envy

Envy is an easy sin to fall into, isn't it? We look at what others have. We look at their successes, their possessions, their looks, their talents, their friends, and we ask ourselves, "Why don't I have that?" We look at what others have that we don't and we become envious. Thomas Aquinas said that "envy is sorrow at another person's good." Gore Vidal had this to say of envy: "When a friend of mine succeeds, something in me dies."

Envy is an easy trap to fall into. I've fallen into it many times. I've never been successful in the eyes of the world. I don't have a big, fancy house. I don't drive a big, fancy car. I don't have a big bank account or a career that the world would say is powerful, influential, or important. In fact, when I took a job in youth ministry, I had an acquaintance that reacted with: "Oh....well....At least its a job, right?" Clearly the world does not see a job in youth ministry as being successful.

A number of years ago, this lack of worldly success bothered me a lot. I was envious of friends and acquaintances who held high and lofty positions and made lots of money. I was envious of the cars they drove and the houses they lived in. I was envious of the fact that they could spend money on anything they wanted and not be afraid of not having enough money to pay the bills or buy groceries. I wanted to be like them, to have their successes. At the time I was working as a manager at Office Depot....well, not even a manager, just an assistant manager. I talked to my wife about leaving my career in retail and doing something else, something that would give me financial success, something that would give me status.

So, I left Office Depot. I entered into a whole new world to me, a world that I thought would give me status, success, and everything I wanted from the world. I spent several months going through a rigorous training program and upon passing my licensing exams, I officially became a financial advisor with a top advisory firm. I held 4 different licenses that allowed me to trade stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and to sell insurance products. I had the tools necessary to advise millionaires on what to do with their money. I was about to become incredibly successful.

I remember that first summer working in my new job. I had not quite finished my training, but had gone through enough of the process to be allowed to attend a Summer Regional Conference at a luxurious resort at Universal Studios in Orlando. I was on cloud nine! I could rub elbows with the rich and successful advisors of the firm. The last evening of the conference was the highlight of the whole weekend for me and my wife. It was the awards banquet. Advisors were given rewards for many different things that night, but the ones that fascinated me the most were the ones that rewarded the most successful advisors. As the million dollar producers (and greater!) got up to receive their rewards I could think of nothing but "I've done it! I'm here. I'm on the verge of tremendous success. That is going to be me receiving that reward in a couple of years!"

The first six months in the field were great! I still wasn't making a lot of money...in fact I was making less money than I did at Office Depot, but I knew that with time and a lot of work I could eventually make substantially more. I was no longer envious of the success of others. I was, in my eyes, successful in the eyes of the world. I also carried about me an unhealthy sense of pride at my status.

Unfortunately, it didn't last. The financial services industry, particularly financial advising, is a very difficult industry to be successful in. You have to be a very good salesman, capable of convincing people of doing business with you. You have to be persistent, and incredibly aggressive. I am none of those things. I had all the knowledge to help my clients and potential clients. I knew how to protect their assets. I knew how to make them money. I just couldn't convince them to do business with me. And after two and a half years of missed sale after missed sale, I was let go for not making my sales goals.

My envy got the best of me. I wanted so much to be like other people that I forgot who I truly was. I'm not a salesman. I knew that going into the job. But I had convinced myself that I could do it. I ended up losing my job and being unemployed for 7 months. My envy ended up hurting me. It ended up hurting my family.

God has given us unique gifts and talents. Not everyone is created equal. God made the world radically unequal because we all have different missions. I'm learning to discover mine, instead of trying to pursue the same mission that God has for others.

So now I'm working in youth ministry. For many people that is a step backwards from even working as an assistant manager at Office Depot. It certainly was for that acquaintance who had such a negative reaction to learning about my new job, who, by the way, was a colleague at that financial advisory firm. I've come to learn that this is my mission. This is what God wants me to do, where He wants me to be. I've learned to let go of envy in my life...at least in this area of my life. And you know what? I'm a lot happier now than when I was pursuing my envious desires. I thought that pursing worldly fame and success would bring me happiness. All it brought was pain and suffering. My life is more peaceful, more relaxed, more enjoyable. Do I still wish I had more? Do I still stress about finances and money? Sure. But in those moments I try to remember that God is in control. He has a plan for me and I need to surrender to it.

So, how do you overcome envy? What's the antidote? Admiration. Gratitude. Kindness.

Be grateful for the gifts God has given you. Be grateful for the gifts He has given to others. Stop comparing yourself to others. You have your own gifts and talents. Realize that you have your own mission, and it is not the same as the mission God has given to others. Pursue that mission, and be content with what you have. No. Not content. Be joyful with the gifts you have.

Throwing Staplers at Jesus

I love to read. I always have. I can remember very clearly, as a teenager, reading This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti, and the chills it gave me as he wrote about spiritual warfare. However, unlike my wife and daughter, I've never been one to re-read books. Kari and my oldest daughter have been known to re-read their favorite books a half dozen times, or more. There are quite a few books that I have enjoyed reading over the years, but I've never re-read any of them. So, when I told my wife that I was going to re-read The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, she was quite surprised. It's been a number of years since I've read it, but I remember it having a profound impact on my life. I'm at a point in my life where I need something that will have a profound impact on it and my spirituality, so I return to the book that launched a new chapter in my life several years ago.

I'm not that far into it, still in the first chapter actually, but it is already having an impact. Thomas tells us of a story about him and his younger brother, John Paul. John Paul was a number of years younger than Thomas, and always wanted to be included in the things that Thomas and his friends did, yet Thomas wouldn't let him. Thomas tells a story of a time where he and a friend were building a hunt in a field near their home. John Paul wanted to be included, but Thomas and his friend wouldn't let him. They yelled at him to go away and even threw rocks at him. Yet he wouldn't leave. He just stood there about a hundred yards away from Thomas, "not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad." John Paul loved his brother and wanted to be near him and included in his life, yet Thomas rejected him and his love.

 What struck me about this was not the story itself. I remember being the one rejected by my siblings, so this was not new and groundbreaking news to me. What struck me is what Merton wrote next:

In a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin; the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved.

As any good Ignatian would do, I put myself in the scene before me and reflected on it. The scene that presented itself to me was one of me going about my daily activities. I imagined myself at work, working on my laptop; at home, playing with my kids, talking to my wife. All the while, Jesus is standing there about a hundred yards away. I'm completely ignoring Him. From time to time He tries to come closer, but I yell at Him. I tell Him to go away. I throw staplers at Him. I throw my kids toys at Him. So He stands there, a hundred yards away, looking sad; and yet there is also a look of love on His face. He wants to come closer. He wants to embrace me with His love. He asks for nothing in return for His love. But I reject it completely and totally. I won't let Him in.

Why do we keep Jesus at a distance in our lives? Why do we force Him and His love away from us? Maybe it's because the love of Jesus, as Merton states, "reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend on the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation." Perhaps we reject the love of Jesus out of a sense of pride. We want to live our lives on our own, without any help. We don't want to be seen as being dependent on others out a fear of humiliation.

In reality, we do need the love of God. It is His love that brought us into this world. It is His love that keeps us in this world. And, when the time comes, it is His love that will bring us out of this world. The love of God has given us all of our talents, all of our treasure. We need to put down our staplers. We need to stop yelling. We need to allow Jesus to come closer to us and embrace us in His love.

Mission to South America

A couple of teens who were a part of my youth ministry program, and have since graduated, have gone to Peru to work with poor and sick children. They have started a blog to chronicle their mission, Our Mission to South America. Please pray for them and those that they will serve.

why? Why? WHY?

Why does God have to keep hitting me over the head? At the beginning of the week I had a conversation with my wife about my need to be more disciplined. I told her I need to have more focus--in my work, in my prayer life, in my relationship with her and my children. Several events occurred this week that reminded me of the need for more discipline in my life. And then today, I pick up the Church bulletin for this coming weekend. (One of the perks of working for the Church is getting an "advance copy" of the parish bulletin.) Each week the pastor writes a letter to the parishioners. This week he wrote this:

In the letter to the Hebrews we read: "At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later, it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it." We are all tempted to seek the easiest way in everything and to want to make things easier for those we love. But it is important to discern what is the best for them because discipline in the right measure helps us more than indulgence.

More on discipline. Regular readers of my blog know that I have written on discipline before. I have written about it here, here, and here, to name a few. So, why does God keep hitting me over the head with discipline? Well....I think it's because I'm not listening. I keep falling into the same trap over and over again. The Devil really knows how to get me. He just distracts me and gets me to waste time on insignificant things instead of focusing my time and energy on the work of the Lord.

The problem with discipline is that it requires so much....well, discipline. And, as we read in the letter to the Hebrews, "all discipline seems a cause not for joy, but for pain." Discipline is hard, and initially there seems to be no fruit from a life of discipline. A life of laziness and indulgence provides an instant satisfaction. It requires no effort, no work. But it ends in a life of misery. I know. That's why my wife and I were talking about discipline at the beginning of the week. She was asking me why I was so miserable, why I have lost my passion. After really looking at it and my life, I discovered that it was because I had lost my discipline. Discipline may not bring an instant joy, but one who is disciplined will, with time, enjoy "the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

Pride

As a youth minister, one of my responsibilities is to find topics to discuss with the teens. Several months ago, I was praying about the upcoming year (which starts in a few short weeks). I prayed about what the Lord wanted me to do with the teens. I prayed over the course of several weeks about it and was not getting a clear idea of where God wanted me to go. At the same time I picked up a couple of books for my own spiritual nourishment. As it turns out I read 2 books back to back about the seven deadly sins and their opposite virtues. I did not intentionally pick out books on this subject...it just happened that way. All of a sudden it dawned on me. God was leading me to discuss the 7 deadly sins with the teens in youth group. Through much prayer and research, I have written a program for my meetings. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will write blog posts on the 7 deadly sins here on my blog. Today, I discuss the first sin....pride.


Pride.

We are all proud in one way or another. So, let me ask....is pride good or is it bad? You will find many people that will tell you that there is nothing wrong with being proud. They will tell you that they are proud of their accomplishments. They will tell you that they are proud of their family. And there is nothing wrong with that. We should be proud of our accomplishments. We should be proud of our family. This pride is good pride. This pride is the reasonable, justified, and balanced sense of joy, respect, and satisfaction in our (or another's) accomplishments and abilities. This pride is not sinful.

Pride is a very sneaky sin. There is a very fine line between good pride and bad pride. Bad pride is the unreasonable, unjustified, and terribly unbalanced sense of joy and satisfaction in our abilities and accomplishments. It fosters a spirit of selfishness, arrogance, restlessness, ingratitude, and an over-inflated sense of worth. This pride is sinful. This is the pride we need to avoid.

With pride, you make everything about you. You attempt to make yourself the center of the universe. Pride oftentimes creeps into your life unnoticed. Before you even realize it you see yourself as better than other people: you're smarter because you had more education, you're more powerful because of your high rank on the job, you're richer because of the size of your house and bank account. The stealthiness of pride works in such a way that before you even realize it you are telling other people how to live their lives and what to do. You say that your intentions are good, that you are just trying to help out the other guy, but deep down inside you puff our your chest because you think you know better than anyone else.

I have never seen myself as a prideful person....until recently. I'm the quiet, reserved guy, that you don't hear much from. I normally keep my mouth shut unless I have something important and pertinent to say. But I, too, have fallen into the trap of pride. I've recognized where I've fallen, and have written about it before in my blog. You can read more about my own struggle with pride here.

The proud person is not a happy person. The proud person is sad because the world does not revolve around him despite his prideful efforts to make it revolve around him. He will never be satisfied because the world will never revolve around him. You may get an immediate sense of satisfaction through a prideful word or action, but that satisfaction will soon fade, leaving you with the desire for more. Pride, at its core, is turning yourself into god. It is saying that you are responsible for your accomplishments, that you are superior to God.

So, how do we counteract pride? With humility. Unfortunately, in our culture humility often brings to mind a preconceived notion of being meek, quiet, timid, and shy--and having an attitude of passiveness and never taking credit for one's own accomplishments. This is not what humility is.

Humility is the recognition and conscious realization that we are creatures, not the Creator; that we are in need of God; and that it is He, and He alone, who has given us life and blessed us with the characteristics that uniquely define you and me. Humility helps us to realize that there is always room for improvement in our life, and that we need God, just as children need their parents.

How do we become humble? Put God first. Put the needs of others ahead of your own needs. And keep your mouth shut when you want to say something prideful. Don't draw attention to yourself, instead praise the accomplishments of others.

Pride will never lead to true happiness, no matter how good it feels to puff out your chest and show off. The humble person has a peace and a joy that cannot be matched. Lord, teach us humility.

Exciting News!

I am now a featured writer at Catholic Dads, writing a column titled "A Father's Faith". Each Friday, I will write about prayer and spirituality as it relates to being a Catholic and a father. Check it out!

UPDATE (8/10/10)

EVEN MORE EXCITING NEWS!

I just had an article published on the Catholic Exchange website, titled Life's Lessons in the Rosary. Check it out!

What a Week!

It's been a very interesting and trying week at my house this past week. We, as a family, encountered some difficult trials and struggles. Things are settling down now and getting back to normal. Thank the Lord!

In the midst of it all, I tried to keep telling myself to keep it all in perspective.  Our struggles through the past week pale in comparison to some of the struggles other families deal with. A good friend of ours, who has been struggling with cancer the the past two years, had an appointment last Thursday to find out if the cancer has come back (Please pray for Scott and his family). When I think about the struggles that Scott, his wife, and his four children are going through right now, it makes my struggles over the past week seem selfish. We know other families who are also struggling with illness, unemployment, and other major issues. When I think about these struggles that other families are having I think: "Why am I letting such a minor struggle get to me so much?" Yet I did. I went from one extreme to the other. I went to a sense of calmness and thinking it's not such a big deal to anger and stress.

I heard, on our local Catholic radio station last week, the DJ say something that gave me pause in light of my struggles. He said that oftentimes we feel that we are out on a limb, and during those times we feel that we keep getting pushed to the edge of that limb, where the branch is smaller and weaker. It's scary to face the prospect of falling out of the tree when we are so close to the end of the limb. However, that is where the fruit is. And, if we do fall off, God will be there to catch us.

Our struggles, no matter how minor or how great, are like approaching the end of that limb. And when we get there, we will find fruit. There is fruit to bear in our struggles. We just have to trust God and go as close to the edge of the limb that He asks us to. We have to trust that He will catch us if we do fall. As the Psalm says, "But you, Lord, are a shield around me; my glory, you keep my head high" (Psalm 3:4).

Instead of fighting those struggles we face, we need to embrace them, and allow God to work through them, allow Him to keep our heads high. Instead of getting angry with God, we need to reach out to Him. He will guide us only if we allow Him to.

"Whenever I cried out to the Lord, I was answered from the holy mountain." (Psalm 3:5)

A Wise Investment

When I was a financial advisor, I would have clients come into my office and tell me about a guy at the office who made a lot of money off of a high risk investment. They would tell me that they wanted some of the same investment or something like it. I would respond with:

Good for him! I'm glad he was lucky enough to get a big gain out of that investment. But it could have, and more often than not it does, had a very detrimental effect on his portfolio. You see, investments like that, although they can provide a short term gain, often end in a long term loss. There is a tremendous amount of risk in those types of investments. People who see gains from them receive those gains more often from luck than they do from any skill or knowledge of the market. So, I, as your advisor, do not recommend you put any money into these high risk investments. Rather, I recommend a long term investment strategy that may not have high short term gains, but in the end will provide a more steady revenue growth.

 My clients would listen to me and my advice, and most of them would agree with me. However, sometimes, I would have a client insist that I buy some of this investment for him. I would tell him that I work for him and I will do what he instructs me to do with his money. I would also be firm with him about the fact that I do not recommend what he is asking me to do. I would tell him that I just don't see it as a wise investment.

How do we invest our life, our time and our energy? Do we make decisions that provide us a short term gain? For example, are our decisions based on lust, pride, envy, or gluttony? There is a very attractive short term gain to these decisions. They fulfill carnal desires and puff up our self-esteem. But, what is the long term gain from making decisions based on these sins? More often than not, there is none. Rather, the long term effects of sin leads to pain and suffering in this life, and, ultimately, life in hell.

We should make wise investments with our life, investments that have a long term benefit instead of a short term gain. We should be chaste, humble, kind, and temperate. There may be no visible short term gains from living a life of virtue. It is a hard life, one that requires a lot of work. But the rewards are far greater than the short-term gain of sin. The rewards lead to a stronger will, better relationships, and a peace that cannot be matched. The rewards are eternal life.

Christ is recommending to us the same thing I recommended to my clients. He is advising us to choose the investments that have a long term gain instead of a short term sense of pleasure and satisfaction. If we choose a life of sin, He won't stop us, but He will tell us that He doesn't see it as a wise investment. He advises a life of virtue. Now that is a wise investment.