Revisiting Envy: Malice, Idolatry, and Scapegoating

The Middle East is a scapegoating society where rape victims can be scapegoated by the rapist and then stoned to death for ‘causing’ the rapist to rape them. Now, godless America has rapidly transitioned into a cruel scapegoating society. This is because great numbers of prideful, ‘sinless’ Americans – deconverters from Christianity, Leftists, Transhumanists, new pagans, Progressive ‘Christians,’ Cultural Marxist social justice warriors, LGBTQ and similar self-righteous morally pure hypocrites – reject their own sinfulness in favor of evolution, causation, power, self-creation, autonomy, ‘moral purity,’ sacred opinions, and omniscient gut feelings.

This is also why social platform social justice hounds from hell scapegoat and cruelly cancel white people. It is also why nonbinary citizens of the American Sodom scapegoat and crucify ‘hateful binary’ Christian men and women while alternate-lifestyle pedophiles and pederasts scapegoat and crucify parents for trying to protect their children from sexual violation. As well, envy is why liars scapegoat the truthful; thieves, rioters and murderers scapegoat society, and so-called victims advocates and critical race theorists scapegoat orthodox white Christians.

Satan is the father of envy, and the scapegoat mechanism. Pride was his original sin, which is why in his commentary on Psalm 18/2,15, Augustine records that pride turned Lucifer into Satan and banned him eternally from heaven. Just as pride turned Lucifer into Satan, the Prince of lies, heresy, murder, rage, envy and demonic darkness, it leads the soul to likewise rebel against God, then inflated by devilish pride, wander off into Satan’s darkness. This vice is therefore no slight evil:

“It makes those infected with it refuse to bow their necks to the yoke of Christ while they harness themselves all the more tightly to the bondage of sin.” Augustine

The Decalogue shows that the beginning of idolatry is pride (preference for self over the Holy Trinity and neighbor). The wicked will of the bad man is not in submission to the Trinity but autonomous devilish self. Having made an idol out of him or herself the narcissist assumes he possesses honor and rights, as is the case for increasing numbers of narcissistic Christians, theologians, atheists, Globalists who imagine they are gods, Leftist Progressive pagan ‘elites’ and their liberal hangers-on . This is why preference for ‘self’ results in contempt for the Holy Trinity, objective truth, law (i.e., Ten Commandments and Constitution), wisdom, norms, authority, standards, rules, institutions and other people, their families, property, and wealth. As a whole, Scripture combines pride with covetousness, greed, malice, hatred, and jealousy into a single concept – envy (ressentiment) – that is a manifestation of idolatry of self issuing in hatred of and rage against the Holy God and one’s brother, which means that there can be no charity whatsoever where there is envy and hatred in one’s heart.

Envy is the passion that causes evil. It is the father of death,

“… the first entrance for sin, the root of wickedness, the birth of sorrow, the mother of misfortune, the basis of disobedience, the beginning of shame. Envy banishes us from paradise…Envy made Joseph a slave. Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the sickness of nature, the bitter poison, the self-willed emaciation, the bitter dart, the nail of the soul, the fire in the heart, the flame burning on the inside…” (Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro, p. 74)

In his first edition dictionary, “The American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828” Noah Webster defines envy as,

“…pain, uneasiness, mortification or discontent excited by the sight of another’s superiority (often spiritual) or success, accompanied by some degree of hatred or malignity, often or usually with a desire or an effort to depreciate the person, and with pleasure at seeing him depressed; malice, malignity, invidiousness, ill will.”

According to Webster, malice is,“…extreme enmity of heart; malevolence; a disposition to injure others…from mere personal gratification or from a spirit of revenge.”

Malice is inseparable from the following:

1. Malevolence: having an evil disposition towards another or others; wishing evil to others…a malevolent heart rejoices in the misfortune of others

2. Malign: to regard with envy or malice; to treat with extreme enmity; to injure maliciously

3. Malignant: malicious; having extreme malevolence; bitter enmity; malice

Much of America’s contemporary mindset is demonically stained with malign antisocial and dehumanizing features and displays,

“…the sine qua non of narcissism, which is flamboyant rage when challenged. It surfaces in celebrities so hardened that they extol and glamorize abuse and cruelty. For the right wing, this is exemplified by Milo Yiannopoulos’s statements about child abuse, and for the left wing by Lena Dunham’s normalization of the abuse she committed and especially by her terminal addiction to the philosophy of glorious abortion.” (Milo, Lena, and Malignant Millennial Narcissism, Deborah C. Tyler, American Thinker, May 13, 2017)

There is even burning envy of believers by unbelievers:

“There is much less envy of the rich by the poor than there is of the happy by the unhappy; by those who believe by those who don’t believe.” Dennis Prager

Bill Maher unwittingly reveals the evil disposition of his heart in his savage tirade against Christianity, which he malignantly describes as a,

“…sexist, homophobic, magic act that’s been used to justify everything from genital mutilation to genocide…” “You want to raise the tax on tobacco so kids don’t get cancer? Okay, but let’s put one on Sunday school so they don’t get stupid.” (Churches Should Pay Taxes for Making Children ‘Stupid,’ zionica.com, April 19, 2016)

In his seminal work, “Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture,” Herbert Schlossberg, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and leading scholar on the relationship between Christianity and the societies in which it has existed, writes that ressentiment begins with perceived injury occasioned by envy toward and covetousness of the spiritual and/or temporal possessions or qualities possessed by another person. If the perception is not either sublimated,

“…or assuaged by the doing of some injury to the object of the feeling, the result is a persistent mental condition, stemming from the repression of emotions that are not acceptable when openly expressed. The result is hatred and the impulse to spite and to say things that detract from the other’s worth.” (p. 51)

Malignant envy is sadistic rejoicing at another person’s suffering, thus vengeance is its principle manifestation:

“Food is a weapon.” (Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs)

Envy has its origin in the tendency to make comparisons between the attributes of another and one’s own attributes such as wealth, popularity, appearance, intelligence, success, personality, position, created sex (straight male, straight female), children, and friends. Any perceived superior difference is enough to set the pathology in motion. Thus the dark spirit of envy whispers continually:

“I can forgive everything, but not that you are – that you are what you are – that I am not what you are – indeed that I am not you.” (Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, Helmut Schoeck, ibid, Schlossberg, p. 52)

The envied other’s very existence is a searing reproach,

“When heaven with such parts blest him, have I not reason to detest him?” is a genuine and natural expression of the human mind. The man who writes as we cannot write, who speaks as we cannot speak, labors as we cannot labor, thrives as we cannot thrive, has accumulated on his person all the offenses of which man can be guilty. Down with him! Why cumbereth he the ground?” (Schoeck) 

Rancid envy oozes from the pores of America’s vicious God, church, and white middle class hating, evolutionary humanist Progressive ruling class and its pro-cross dressing, pro-anal sodomy, pro-pedophilia, pro- abortion, pro-white racism, pro-terrorism agenda leading to the misery, impoverishment, degradation, humiliation and suffering of middle class Americans. For example, while pretending to be a caring President for every American, former President Obama’s barely leashed enmity fueled his publicly stated belief that DNA doesn’t make people male or female but it does make white people racist. Obama’s depraved claims were described by our equally depraved media as ‘bold’ rather than what they really were – malicious.

When envy has finally saturated a society’s entire ruling class and its’ privileged special rights groups (barbarians), will-to-power and vice are celebrated and applauded rather than virtue and opposition from morally convicted people will be crushed by any means. It is then that we will face the scapegoating and crucifixion of faithful Christians and morally upright souls.

The most frightening aspect of America’s descent into madness, idolatry, envy, vengeance-seeking, murderous rage, and lawlessness is that it will lead inevitably to a tyranny of evil, persecution, crucifixion, and martyrdom:

“The New Martyrs’ example and their legacy is precious, because in this, 21st century, it will be the turn of Western Christians to experience martyrdom. In Western Europe they will be persecuted by the unholy alliance between the postmodern, Christophobic velvet totalitarianism of the therapeutic hyper-state, and a resurgent Islam which already accounts for a quarter of all newborns in France. In the United States they will be persecuted for refusing to accept the destruction of the moral foundation of the society, currently epitomized by abortion, by “gay marriage,” and by the ever-expanding speech and thought codes. Instead of being thrown to the lions or sent to Siberia, the resisters will be subjected – by some monstrous mechanism devised by an ever more activist judiciary – to the mandatory “sexual diversity orientation sessions,” or feminist-led pro-abortionist “right-to-choose education workshops,” or “immigrant rights sensitivity training,” after which the continuing refusal to recant will lead to compulsory “therapy” and forced medication. This scenario is not farfetched on either side of the Atlantic. Western Christians should be prepared for martyrdom.” (Ibid, Srdja Trifkovic)

When a majority of a society’s citizens are no longer guilty of their own sins, scapegoats are necessary. Human scapegoats will be burdened with the sins of the guilty and cruelly burned on altars of the depraved. Scripture calls this idolatry,. and since idolatry leads to the conceptual murder of the Word Who created the heavens and earth (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1, 14) and to the rejection of His work on the cross, this means that by their own choice they assign themselves to hell by judging themselves unfit for Paradise:

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Revelation 21:8

In his 1974 essay, “Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations,” repentant ex-atheist Alexander Solzhenitsyn warns that the only way out for an idolatrous, envy-filled people is repentance,

“..and the search for our own errors and sins. We must stop blaming everyone else (and) claiming that we alone are in the right. Repentance is the first bit of firm ground underfoot, the only one from which we can go forward not to fresh hatreds but to concord. Repentance is the only starting ground for spiritual growth. “

Having begun the work of repentance, we will then be able to carry our Christ’s command to,

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:44-45)”

Without wholesale confession, repentance and a turning back to our Lord, the wrath of God will fall upon this proud, ressentiment-torn nation:

“The wrath of God is a fearsome and terrifying thing. Only those who have been covered by the blood of Christ, shed for us on the cross, can be assured that God’s wrath will never fall on them. “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!” (Romans 5:9).” (What is the biblical understanding of the wrath of God? gotquestions) 

updated 2/24 @Linda Kimball

Linda writes on worldview and related subjects.