Tilly Dillehay, a pastor's wife, mother, and homemaker offers a Christian perspective on understanding and overcoming envy in Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your Joy (September 4, 2018, Harvest House Publishers). She was a former journalist, and newspaper and lifestyle magazine editor. She facilitates the Green Workshop that touches on envy for women in local churches. In this Christian literature, with courage and honesty, Dillehay tells her struggles with envy that clouds her relationships and her love for music.
She starts with defining glory as " the shining joy, beauty, intelligence, power, and goodness of God himself." What we have is a borrowed glory like the light of the moon borrowed from the sun. Disconnected from the source, an envious person feels bad about other people’s looks, wealth, achievements, and relationships.
To manage this emotion, Dillehay provides scriptures that explain what the Bible says our physical body, charm or influence, intellect, money, creativity, competence and control, and relationships, the seven sources of envy. Love, diligence, humility, and transparency are the four virtues we need to have to avoid being eaten up by envy.
Other Takeaways
• Inequality does exist and we need to accept that some people have more while others have less.
• Each of us has God-given talents which we are accountable for.
• Being able to gaze at God's glory without harm and worship it, being like Christ and sinless, having eternal wealth, having dominion over creation are the four kinds of glory Christians will possess in the future.
• True happiness is in Christ.
Thoughts...Thoughts...Thoughts...
Even though this is Christian literature, we can still glean lessons from it about envy and its effects on us, which is experienced by all, one way or the other.
The goal of the book is to change the perspective of the reader on envy, and it did. I am used to comparing myself with others, those who have more and better things, thinking that I am an inferior, making me overlook the skills and talents that I have. This book makes me appreciate the borrowed glory I have and the opportunity to share it with others. Glory, as a borrowed thing, must be celebrated by enjoying our talents, skills, wealth, beauty, relationship, and intelligence, not something to be shown off to put others down or to be insecure about when others who have more display what they have.
Although the personal stories and other people's anecdotes are too long before going to the point, I appreciate the discussion questions at the end of every chapter that helped me understand the book's theme.
Discussion Questions
1. Has this book changed the way you think about envy?
2. Was the author successful in making her message across by including her own story?
3. When do you feel envious of others?
4. Why is it hard to accept the truth that we are envious of others?
5. How would you deal with envy?
Further Information
Title: Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your JoyAuthor: Tilly DillehayGenre: Christian LiteraturPublisher: Harvest House Publishers (September 4, 2018)Publication Date: September 4, 2018Print length: 208 pagesASIN: B07GRK2GPJ
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