Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
Well, we are at the final commandment. The 10th commandment that God wrote on the stone tablets for His people. Thou shalt not covet. Covet is really not a word I hear too much any more. Let us once again go to the dictionary and see if we can get more precise with the meaning of covet.
1. to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others: to covet another's property.
2. to wish for, esp. eagerly: He won the prize they all coveted.
3. to have an inordinate or wrongful desire.
I think that most people when thinking of coveting, just think of desiring something. The definition here seems to indicate something a bit greater than just thinking, ‘I’d like to have a car like my neighbor‘. It really implies that the desire becomes obsessive. It might be perfectly fine to say, my neighbor has a really nice wife, I wish I could find a wife like that. It would fall into coveting when you start saying, I want her, and begin going over to your neighbors house and putting the moves on.
It tends to indicate selfishness and the willingness to do bad things to obtain that which is not yours. It could develop into obsessive ness and possessiveness to the point of being mentally unstable. The stalker of the girl I lived with was coveting. He was willing to do all kinds of dirty tricks, and make our lives hell because of his coveting her. Many times that kind of wrongful desire leads to violence.
When I was younger and smoked weed, I would often have the best available. A couple of friends wanted that weed so bad that they broke into my house one night and stole it. Who knows what would have happened if someone had been home and caught them, but their desire to possess something that wasn’t theirs led them to commit a crime. If they had asked me I would have given them some. Instead, they had such little regard for the rights of myself and my parents that they were willing to take the risk of breaking and entering.
I think there are many people who wish they had something someone else has, and that seems to be just fine if your desire to have that makes you work harder to try and acquire something similar for yourself, but when you cross that line where that desire becomes so strong and specific that you have to have the exact thing your neighbor possesses, you have crossed the line into covetousness.
2 comments:
I'm sure it's really immature of me to giggle that you said thou shalt not covet they neighbor's ass. I feel like a teenager giggling in church.
I know it's a sin but often coveting our neighbors is how we know what we aspire to be...even in Christianity.
Well, that is what I try to point out, it is ok to want things (or qualities)your neighbor has, It's not ok to want that exact thing your neighbor has to the point where you will do bad things to obtain them from your neighbor.
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