Attack

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

9. Attack
“He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.” Iago in Othello.
The complex character of Lyndon Baines Johnson who was both one of our greatest politicians and our greatest liars. He not only had trouble “telling” the truth but in “seeing” it. He was a master of using lies to attack his opponents.

Attack and Flight
Sin alternates between attack and flight. Sinners assault other human beings or else they ignore them. They invade somebody else’s life or they flee their responsibility for it. They transgress God’s prohibitions and avoid God’s requirements. They may even treat themselves with self-abuse or self-neglect.
This approach/avoidance pattern lies deep within Scripture. There are those who attack the light of God, and are consumed by his heat, and there are those who turn their backs on the light of God, and freeze in the cold darkness.
We use lies to avoid our responsibilities and to assault other human beings.

A Select History of Envy
In Iowa, Miss Harvest Queen strangled Miss Homecoming Queen with a leather belt.
High school yearbook editor in Indiana draws facial hair, underarm hair, blackens teeth of girls she envies just before sending it to the printer.
An African-American girl in Oakland works hard to get into medical school but is ridiculed and scorned by her peers.
In Chicago, subordinates spread lies about a publishing executive that cause him to be fired.
In Texas a mother of a thirteen-year-old cheerleader hired a hit man to kill the mother of a rival cheerleader to disrupt her ability to do well at tryouts.
An envier doesn’t care whether you have earned part of your success or whether some golden parachute from heaven has dropped into your lap; to an envier, your advantage is totally unfair either way.
Envy is nastier than covetousness in that what envy wants is not what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have it.
To covet is to want somebody else’s good so strongly that one is tempted to steal it while envy is to resent somebody else’s good so much that one is tempted to destroy it.

Resentment, Pride, and Destruction
The advantages of others makes the envious angry. Envy is a corrupted form of anger. Resentment is a protracted form of anger.
The envier resents another’s good because it scuffs his pride.
The envier usually resents someone that is slightly superior to him or equal to him.
The proud envier keeps running for the office of God.
Enviers also rejoice in the misfortunes of others (Schadenfreude).
Envy poisons the envier and introduces gangrene into his own soul.
Enviers want to be envied.