Slithering covetousness

Why is it that we never hear any preaching or teaching on the topic of covetousness?  It is a good source for plenty of discussion and exposition.  After all, who is exempt from this nasty little sin? 

Ooops!! Maybe I have found my answer.

Maybe it is TOO common and we prefer to pontificate on the sins we are not presently committing.  I hate to admit that the guy I work for has it made and I would love to have his easy job doing very nearly nothing and getting paid fat money.  Of course, the only thing that makes his job so easy is that I am so all-fired good that he can coast. 

Uh-oh! I felt that slithering begin around my feet and thought I heard a hiss of pride from somewhere.  Something wicked is proud to hear me agreeing with his favorite topic…the proud me.

Maybe this side of coveting is too easy to detect and turn to forgiveness.  I can tell you the side that is more difficult.  It is the side that is prompted by an overactive sense of justice.  I call it the Calvinist facet.  It works like this.  Joe Blow works in a factory and has a difficult job that he detests because it feels like a prison.  In walks a Barry Lewis who has the job he wants but Joe could never be qualified to do.  Suddenly, he is Barry’s worst enemy and joins forces with P.D. Coker (a guy that works for the same company as Barry) and they begin to feed each other “the poison of asps” that they tuck into their lips like a disgusting dip of snuff (Romans 3:13).  The problem with Blow and Coker is that they can never recognize that they are doing anything wrong.  After all, they are justified in their inferiority complex and the fact that Barry is too good (or smart or healthy or successful or powerful or connected or________) for them.  The Calvinist facet tempts them to set up exclusive parameters as to who is really “in” and who is out.  If you are in with Barry, then you are out with them.  Basically, the covetousness here doesn’t want what the other has…it wants the other to not have it because he does not deserve it.  Hidden from this Calvinist facet mentality is the devilish sleight of hand that Blow/Cokerism is measured by the smallness of its adherents and not by any truly objective standard (like, maybe, the cross?).  The deceitfulness works because we should all be quick to champion a just cause…and what more just cause is there than tearing down Barry and all those damned upstart Lewises.  There is no mere foot-rubbing slither in action here.  When I look in the mirror I see my snake’s forked tongue licking sin/dust and loving its lack of flavor!

This one gets us all…even preachers, teachers, deacons, ministerial types…maybe especially so.  The gravitational pull of “Pharisee” is working from another dimension! 

Meanwhile, perhaps it is too easy to turn to the other sins that I don’t commit and remind myself of how good I am, masking the fact that I am far too focused on me and my results instead of having the cross at the top of my eye chart.  If the cross is the place where I lay my burdens down, then I should shed my burden of wanting to be important and take up His cross of reconciliation.