Chris Campbell

Beloved in the body of Christ,

Envy is perhaps one of the most dangerous of the sins of humanity, not because it presides somewhere on a hierarchy of sin, but because it is one of the most present today.

I know I must fight against it every day, much as the Psalmist fights against it saying:

For they suffer no pain, and their bodies are sleek and sound; In the misfortunes of others they have no share; they are not afflicted as others are; Therefore they wear their pride like a necklace and wrap their violence about them like a cloak… They scoff and speak maliciously out of their haughtiness they plan oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their evil speech runs through the world.

I feel completely helpless at times; thinking, what can I do, what difference can I truly make, as lowly as I am?

This is why the next words of our Psalmist are:

And so the people turn to them and find in them no fault. They say, "How should God know? is there knowledge in the Most High?" So then, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase their wealth.

There is a self-doubt ingrained into our religion. This self-doubt is both the fuel of and extinguisher of, Christian faith.

We, like our Psalmist, seem locked in this self-doubt "for the waters have risen up to my neck." Yet we must realize that just as the Psalmist suffers, so do his oppressors suffer, so do we suffer, so do the poor suffer, and so does Jesus suffer.

This suffering is what we should see as tying us together as created beings of God not, as levels of suffering which separate us.

Our goal should always be to lessen the suffering of those around us, and by doing so lessen the existence of human suffering as a whole.

God died so that we may live; we die so that God may be!

May you live in Truth, Peace, and Love,
Chris Campbell