My oldest son played basketball in high school. Throughout his career, he was a good player but struggled with free throws. The truth is that these free shots are a challenge if you aren’t confident in hitting them. When you shoot them in your home gym, there’s often complete silence where there’s nothing in your way but your own thoughts and ability. At an away gym, the crowd tries to intimidate players by yelling and distracting. Either way, free throws are not easy.
I used to tell my son to get up to the free throw line, close his eyes, and imagine the shot going in with a swish. Do not ever think or allow the word “miss” to enter your mind. Even if the thought is “Don’t miss,” don’t allow miss to enter your mind. Only think about the basketball going in with an audible, “Swish!”.
I used to encourage him to practice his free throws and while he was practicing the physical motion of shooting the ball, he should also practice the mental approach of imagining the ball go through the hoop before shooting.
Bring the ball to the forehead, elbow in, feet spread apart, bend the knees slightly, imagine the swish, push with the elbows, and flick the wrist to get the spin on the ball with an arch. I would personally demonstrate this with him in the driveway and gamify the entire process.
In a lot of ways, envy is like this. Allow me a moment to explain…
Last week, I drew from the story (linked here) of Ishmael and Hagar and showed how we are creating scoffers in our young people by doing very similar things as Sarah and Abraham did to Ishmael. I talked about bitterness and anger and the process of pushing our young people away from God.
The seed of becoming a scoffer is anger and bitterness, but there is also a role for envy. Honestly, it is hard to determine what comes first—anger, bitterness, or envy. However, it seems clear that they build off each other. They are escalators or springboards for the other.
The Oxford dictionary defines envy as “the feeling of wanting to be in the same situation as somebody else; the feeling of wanting something that somebody else has.”
The main synonym for envy is jealousy, but the differentiator for jealousy is that you are fearful of losing something you have while envy is an unhealthy desire for something someone other than you possesses. I can easily imagine that Ishmael struggled with envy as a young man toward Isaac. Isaac probably got all of the attention from Abraham and Sarah.
For many of us, envy is not usually on our list of serious sins.
However, Envy is clearly mentioned in the “works of the flesh” listed by Paul. It is associated with such horrible traits as sorcery, enmity, strife, anger, sexual immorality, drunkenness, orgies.
These represent some pretty serious evil, and honestly, this dark horde of traits remind me of the Sodom that Lot lived in. Paul says that people who do these things or are characterized by them will not “inherit the kingdom of God.’ They are “opposed” to the works of the Spirit.
James says it even more clearly: “Friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4: 4). Envy is an enemy of a life lived with God. In the context of James 4, you cannot be simultaneously defined by envy and living a life directed by the Holy Spirit. Having a foot in both worlds is impossible.
The antidote to envy is thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving not only doesn’t “hang out” with envy but it is wholly incompatible with it in the same way that two magnets that you try to force to touch on the same pole repel each other.
Thanksgiving repels envy because they are incompatible. In other words, to the point that envy is prominent, thanksgiving is not, and to the point thanksgiving is prominent, envy is not. It is like light and dark or foolish and wise. This incompatibility is significant.
Don’t misunderstand. Envy only enters a vacuum of thanksgiving. Envy does not repel Thanksgiving. They are not equal in power.
Therefore, you avoid envy and the whole host of the works of darkness as mentioned before by becoming better at thanksgiving, not by trying harder to not be envious. I think we make controlling our emotions and thought life harder because we expend a lot of effort in avoiding evil like envy by trying really hard to not think envious thoughts. However, there is a better way.
Quarterly, we have a pest control company come out and spray poison all around our house. We don’t have a major bug problem. This is preventative.
Thanksgiving is like poison to envy, so it’s important to train your child to be thankful. Thanksgiving is a habit that can be trained. (I talk more about Thanksgiving in my email course on Thanksgiving, which you can sign up for here. This email course is free and comes to your email box over several days.)
Being thankful in this world today is like priming a sensitive tool or instrument.
Thanksgiving is a habit or reflex. When you practice thanksgiving, you train your attention to look for things to be thankful for. You will look for the blessings of God rather than the things to complain about, or be jealous about, or to be angry about.
We are surrounded by evil in this world, and it has to be purposely and consciously beat back from overwhelming our minds. Without even trying to find it, your child has envy exhibited all around them—think about social media, co-ops, other parents, etc.
Beating back darkness is not for the faint of heart, and the strength and skills to do this only comes with focused and enduring effort much like a basketball player might gain through practicing the correct physical motions and mindset in shooting free throws. However, the big difference with Thanksgiving and envy, as opposed to a game of basketball, is that we know the outcome. We know Jesus will be victorious, and he is ready to use his power to give us victory.
As I mentioned in the previous email, our children don’t like competition for your attention and love. But we aren’t perfect, and we can’t handle every situation perfectly. Also, we can’t completely shield them from disappointment and evil from others in this world. We can’t keep everything out, and there are going to be moments of anger, bitterness, and disappointment.
Therefore, you need to teach your children how to handle those times that you mess up or when others disappoint them. To use another basketball analogy, if you are going to shoot the basketball, you are going to get fouled. There is going to be contact! Free throws are part of the game because fouls are part of the game.
Thanksgiving gives them a way to handle the disappointments of this world in a healthy and Christ-like manner. It gives them resiliency and maturity. They need to practice it and prime their attention to see the blessing and goodness and love in this world. Thanksgiving is like pest control for envy, anger, and bitterness. It keeps that trifecta from swirling up and gathering strength in the heart of our children and draw them into the life of a scoffer.
I talk about all this in the email course on Thanksgiving. Your children need your help in this area because thanksgiving is not natural. Just as our natural inclination to a dangerous situation is to run rather than draw a sword and fight, our natural inclination to situations we don’t like and our children don’t like is to have a bad attitude—become angry, bitter, and harbor jealousy and envy, not to look for what we can be grateful for.
