Posts Tagged ‘envy’

Anger is universally recognized as an extremely dangerous emotion.  Two thousand years ago the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger lamented, “No plague has cost the human race so dear” (“On Anger,” 1.2).  The Jewish psychiatrist Solomon Schimmel wrote, “Of the seven deadly sins, anger is the most pervasive, injurious to self and others, and responsible for unhappiness and psychopathological behavior. … As a psychotherapist I spend more time helping clients deal with their anger than with any other emotions.”[1] Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Fairlie wrote, “Envy is the one Deadly Sin to which no one readily confesses.”[1] Why is this so?  Pride is the root of all sins, and yet it can have a positive meaning and even in its sinfulness has a sort of perverted nobility.  What makes envy so nasty?  In order to answer this question, we’ll need to define envy carefully and distinguish it from two closely related words “covetousness” and “jealousy.” Read the rest of this entry »

             Chapter 2 of Till We Have Faces, the subject of the third of my reflections on Lewis’s novel, contains three important developments.

• We learn more about the Fox’s beliefs.
• Psyche is born.
• The first words are uttered that compare Psyche with the gods and the concomitant danger of provoking the goddess Ungit’s envy.

    Read the rest of this entry »

            One of the privileges and pleasures of teaching at a classical Christian school like Cair Paravel Latin School (www.cpls.org) is working with a wonderful faculty.  This semester for faculty development we are all reading Till We Have Faces (Faces) by C. S. Lewis.  I would like to propose to my readers that we read the book together.  I’ll write a brief reflection on each chapter and everybody can chime in with their thoughts and questions.  Read the rest of this entry »