“That’s it,” replied Collin, “that’s the way these people operate. They gain their false sense of superiority by belittling others around them whom they perceive to be a cut above them. They can’t accept that they are not the most superior ones even though they may be very good. They make themselves feel superior in their own minds by finding reasons, valid or otherwise, to bring down the better people like the Lawtons. They cannot admit, even to themselves, that they are bringing them down because of their envy of them and because of their damaged pride. So they search for derogatory reasons to bring them down.
“In this case, the Lawtons were labeled spendthrifts in order to give the belittlers an excuse and to cover up the real reason for their bringing them down. If they can’t find any excuses, they invent them, or twist some of the good characteristics of people like the Lawtons into bad characteristics. Also nobody is perfect, so they pick little holes in their victim’s weaker areas. But worse still, they take every outstandingly good point about a person and twist it into something derogatory as I shall illustrate later. The better the person is, the more they will victimize him.”
Collin looked at Gilda as he continued, “There is even more here than silly wounded pride, Gilda. Pride that has to put down and/or destroy another person is also riddled with envy and often results in hostility in various ways and to varying degrees.”
Collin then looked around at the group. “I am going to quote two scholars to you now,” he said with a grin. “I hope it is safe to do so in this group!”
“Careful,” quipped Leo, “we may get perturbed.” Collin smiled, “I’ll take my chances with you people,” then continued, “the renowned biblical scholar, William Barclay, in his Bible commentary, says of envy:
‘There is a good and a bad envy. There is the envy which reveals to a man his own weakness and inadequacy, and which makes him eager to copy and to rise to some greater example. And there is the envy which is essentially a grudging thing. It looks at a fine person, and is not so much moved to aspire to that fineness, as to resent that the other person is fine. It is the most warped and twisted of human emotions.’ (The Daily Study Bible, William Barclay - THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS. Page 28).
Collin then commented, “as we go on with our stories, we will see how the resentment to a fine person, mentioned by Barclay, issues in hostility, strife and rivalry. Barclay defined strife this way:
‘The meaning is the contention which is born of envy, ambition, the desire for prestige, and place, and office and prominence. It comes from the heart in which there is jealousy. If a [person] man is cleansed of jealousy he has gone far to being cleansed of all that arouses contention and strife.’ (Ibid).
Collin paused briefly, and spoke again, “Barclay adds this terrific sentence that needs to be drilled into the mind of every belittler:
‘It is a God given gift to be able to take as much pleasure in the successes of others as in one’s own.’ (Ibid).
Collin added emphatically, “Therein lies the big problem of belittlers. They scorn rather than take pleasure in the successes of others; more especially the successes of fine people of whom they are envious. I’ll just repeat that again:
‘It is a God given gift to be able to take as much pleasure in the successes of others as in one’s own.’ (Ibid).
Collin continued. “Barclay makes another interesting comment which I quoted earlier and which needs emphasis because it is so adaptable to our cause. He is commenting on the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to ‘live at peace with all [people].’ But, says Barclay, Paul points out that there are two biblical qualifications for living at peace with all people, (a) ‘if it be possible,’ and (b) ‘as far as you can.’ Barclay then adds,
‘Paul knew very well that it is easier for some to live at peace than it is for others. He knew that one [person] can be compelled to control as much temper in an hour as another [person] in a lifetime. (The Daily Study Bible, William Barclay, THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS, page 184).
Collin added his own comments, “We can apply this passage or rule to the circumstances of people like you and I in our interaction with belittlers. We have to at times, and quite often, put up with more from belittlers with their undisciplined pride, envy, jealousy and strife, in an hour than some people do in a lifetime. With others, it may well indeed be a very occasional occurrence. With us it becomes a way of life, almost continuous, always annoying, stressful and cruel.
“So let no psychiatrist, therapist, clergy person, supervisor, or other person tell you that you are just oversensitive to the little annoyances of life. The people who tell you that may very well have only little annoyances in their life, or they may have had only one or two larger annoyances throughout their lifetime, which they survived with limited hurt, and which they were eventually able to put behind them and go on to live peaceful lives. They will lightly tell you to do the same.
“Then again, the matter is often passed off as ‘personality clash’- two opposing characters who cannot come to terms. That explanation is lacking in that it is the belittler, one person, who causes the trouble. And again, some envious belittlers themselves when confronted about the abuse they inflict on others, while trivializing the whole matter in doing so, will pass it off as just ‘mean spirited.’ In their pride they cannot bear to admit they are envious of someone else, because that would be an admission that the someone else is gifted better than they in some ways. Rather than admit to that they shrug it off lightly as just a little mean spirited, as though there wasn’t much to it, and the recipient of it is too sensitive. In actuality, what is passed off as a little mean spirited is often brutal, and career, health and life damaging.
“The fact is, to paraphrase Barclay, we of our type have to put up with more envy in an hour than do some people in a lifetime. Personally, I have never known a time in my adult life when I wasn’t dodging a person or persons who were trying to bring me down, with often a substantial number of people getting a kick out of them doing so. Many others in their naïveté and unawareness just don’t even see what is going on. It is a way of life for persons like you and I. It becomes a continuous and heavy burden to carry, particularly in our younger years. And like our friend and colleague Alban has illustrated since this group began, we sometimes snap under the cruel and oppressive load and are then labeled weaklings. This in turn plays into the hands of the belittlers and puts us down further. For me personally, the friendship of nice people who understand, even though often silently, helps tremendously to make the burden of the almost constant behavior of belittlers bearable and possible to cope with.
“But,” said Collin, “we can discuss all that further later on if you wish. Now I wish to quote another scholar, Lance Webb and his book on the traditional sins of the church and of Christian theology. Webb sees envy as a by-product of pride, or what I prefer to tag misplaced or undisciplined pride.
‘Each of the other six sins in a very definite way is a child of pride. Envy is self-love unable to permit anyone to excel or rise above one’s own superiority, with resulting hate, jealousy, intolerance, prejudice, slander, gossip, and use of sarcasm or more violent means of leveling others to one’s own height.’ (Lance Webb: CONQUERING THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS. Page 41. Abingdon Press, 1955).
“This is a good definition,” remarked Collin, “except that envious belittlers not only want to level us to their own height, they want to level us below their own height. They are often power and control people as well. It is not power and control for the sake and furtherance of the church, but rather an egotistical desire to satisfy something lacking in their own self-centered mind-set. They don’t usually come across to us as people of power, but their sought after control over matters gives them a sense of being up there with the better natured, truly influential people. Hence I feel right in referring to them as power and control