An article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker proved to be a conversation stopper. You read it and think, “What?” and walk away thoughtful and speechless.

Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s public schools, tells how he encountered Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her young son Jack at a social function. The boy approached him and said, “They tell me you run the city schools? And that you are the one who declares snow days.”

Now, little Jack attended a private school–it will not surprise readers to know–but he knew that if the public schools closed the private schools followed suit. Jack said, “When I have a birthday, I’d like the schools to be closed.”

I don’t recall the superintendent’s answer

As it turned out, it was Caroline who called in that favor. The snow was coming down in buckets and she called the superintendent’s house. “Tomorrow is not Jack’s birthday,” she said, “but he has a big paper coming due and he’s not ready for it. This would be a great time for you to declare a snow day.”

The superintendent, now retired, admits that that was one of the days he closed the schools for snow.

Fascinating. More than a little strange.

One wonders just how many of the high level decisions being made every day are prompted not by economic or other realities but as personal favors to people of influence.

In my most recent article for this blog–“Greed: The Favorite Sin of the Free Enterprise”–I started to tell that story and make the point that, for most of us, it’s not money we’re grasping and groping for, but the things money can buy. Like influence with people in high places.

Caroline Schlossberg has such influence. And money too, we presume. Enough to shut down the city schools for a day for her young son. How he must admire his mom. The things she does for him.

So, what has your mom done for you lately?

Here’s what my mother did for me recently.

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“Is life passing you by because you don’t have a high definition television? Well, now you can….”

The advertisements in the various media make no secret of it. If you do not have the latest computers, televisions, phones, and techno-gadgets, if you are not driving a car less than three years old and equipped with rear cameras, heated seats, and Sirius radio, you are surely among the deprived in this world. You must be the poor and deprived we keep hearing about.

Life is passing you by.

That’s how it feels to some of us. Teens in particular fall prey to this deadly syndrome.

The old-timers called it avarice. We know it as greed.

Twenty years ago, Wall Street was telling the world that greed is good, that the hunger to get more and more, to gain and possess and control and dominate, was all good. If anyone is listening to Wall Street any more, they’re not saying.

And yet, greed is alive and well in this country. And every other country, too, I expect, since it seems to be related to the depravity of the human heart and not geographically situated.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. (I Timothy 6:9)

Someone responds, “I don’t want to be rich. I don’t actually care for money. I just want the things money buys.” That’s a little word-game we play to camouflage our grasping, groping greediness.

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A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on “Happy Days,” the television series. She fantasized of the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

One day I just couldn’t take it any more and did something really mean.

I said, “Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the ’50s, we fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. We feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

I know, I know. I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

The truth is I’m as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That’s my definition, not one you’ll find in a book somewhere.

The current Sherlock Holmes craze owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than he has ever been, and that’s saying something.

In “The Sherlockian,” Graham Moore’s new book that plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock, the protagonist, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.

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My friend Don Davidson, who pastors Alexandria Virginia’s First Baptist Church as well as it’s ever been done, turns out an end-of-the-year retrospective which will serve as my model for what follows.

So, here’s my report on my (ahem) Retirement Ministry in this, my third year of unemployment….

Revivals

Six revivals this year. In diverse and wonderful cities such as Ochlocknee, Georgia, Saragossa and Deatsville, AL, Mt Hermon and Crowville, LA, and Picayune, MS. I loved every one of them and made friends for life and beyond.

Banquets.

McComb and Columbus, MS. Zachary and Moss Bluff, LA. Linden and Grove Hill, AL. In banquets, I sketch people before, during, and after the meal, and at the appointed time get up and tell my stories, doing my best to be entertaining and inspirational. I have more fun than anyone there.

Senior Adult stuff.

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Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:26)

It’s funny that the Old Testament’s references to envy focus on God’s people looking outward to the world (“sinners”). They were not to envy wrongdoers.

The New Testament’s references, by contrast, are directed inwardly, warning believers against envying each other. For those of us who know the inner workings of church life, we fully understand the change.

Now, a confession first.

Over the last two weeks, as I’ve reflected on the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, avarice, anger, sloth, gluttony, and lust), the one that interested me least was this one: envy. What’s exciting about that? Nothing exotic. No funny stories to tell, no dramatic scriptural stories to relate.

In fact, I decided envy is not a problem in my world. I honestly don’t know anyone sitting around stewing over the neighbors having a car and wishing it was in their own driveway. I know of no preachers fuming because another pastor received a doctorate which he should have rightfully received. So, maybe envy is no longer a problem to moderns.

The reason for that strange–and erroneous–conclusion is the narrow definition I was applying to the concept.

If to envy means to wish we owned something another person now possesses and only that, few of us would be guilty. But that’s far too skinny an interpretation of this obese transgression.

Here then are several observations on envy, what I’m calling “the sneakiest” of the seven deadly sins.

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God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (I Peter 5:5)

When a British newspaper invited readers to submit their answers to the question “What’s Wrong With the World?” the inimitable G. K. Chesterton wrote: “Editors: I am. Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton.”

Of the so-called seven deadly sins, pride always leads the parade. It’s the granddaddy of them all, the source of the other six. Consider how this is so—

–Lust is pride expressing itself sexually, as well as in other ways. It takes what it wants, uses it, and tosses it in the trash.

–Avarice is pride in the marketplace and in our culture. It wants more and more and is never satisfied.

–Anger is pride on the highway and in relationships. It didn’t get what it wants and wants revenge.

–Envy is pride casting an evil eye at its neighbor, wishing for what he has and that he had a wart on his nose. (An old childhood curse we would inflict in jest)

–Sloth is pride expressing its selfishness concerning work. None for him, thanks. He’ll sit this one out. Everyone owes him.

–Gluttony is pride at the dinner table.

Pride is an exalted sense of oneself. It’s that simple.

Sometimes people speak of pride as a correct and healthy sense of oneself, as in, “Take pride in yourself” and “Take pride in your work.” And since there is no Czar of Correctness concerning word usage, that is as legitimate as using pride to mean an inflated, puffed up ego.

This is probably as good a place as any to quote my wonderful old professor, Dr. Ray Frank Robbins, who would tell us seminarians, “Words do not have meanings. Word have usages.”

Chesterton was correct; he was the problem. But so am I. And so are you.

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