"You shall not covet... anything that is your neighbour's... you shall not desire your neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbour's."
In Matthew's Gospel, chapter six, Jesus says:
"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
A quick reflection for my final post on the ten commandments.
This guidance from God helps us appreciate others and treat them with respect by loving them and behaving fairly when people have possessions we want for ourselves.
So it is OK to want something someone else has but not if it makes us sad, resentful or in any other way unkind towards others, nor if it leads us to try to get the thing we want dishonestly. Like by stealing, swindling or lying etc.
I think sometimes it's OK to want something we don't have. If it spurs us on to be better or do better, or in some good way to seek to get the object of our desire, as long as it is a reasonable and good thing for us to obtain.
When faced with feelings of irritation or when looking down on people for having things I think the best way to approach it is to recognise their goodness.
This takes Christianity to do well. I don't see how anyone can hold a view that all of humanity is good in themselves with the evil in the world perpetrated by the human race.
If we see people as made in God's image and with the potential for good through divine power then it makes sense that humanity is good.
If we see ourselves as sinners who can be forgiven by a loving, kind God we realise we aren't better than others, and as we have been forgiven it is fair that we forgive others too.
So with this forgiving, Christian ideal to strive for we can see that even the most apparently reprehensible person can be prayed for.
We are loving people often who have a great deal, and maybe unjustly, when so many have so little. But we must love them if we are to be like Jesus, and recognise that they are as entitled to the goods they have which they have received through just means.
People who obtain goods through unjust means might make us angry and they are even more in need of our prayers. Not being entitled to their goods, they will suffer for their unjust gain more than those who suffer loss in this life.
If we feel we do not have what we deserve then the answer in the long run might be some struggle against injustice but right now it is to persevere in gratitude. Acceptance of our present situation and giving thanks for what we have and don't have is liberating and beautiful.
I started praying prayers of thanksgiving as a New Age person to try and cultivate a more positive attitude.
I believed in a pantheistic creator God who didn't really hear my prayers so they were more like positive affirmations spoken in meditation.
I highly recommend getting to know the good God who loves to hear our prayers of thanks to Him because He is our loving Daddy.
Like all good Fathers He gives us good things and sometimes says: no, you can't have that.
It is most annoying and certainly does me the world of good.
I will keep asking myself what my most treasured possessions and desires are to see if my heart is where it ought to be. If my heart is in the right place then I don't think I need to worry about what I don't have, or what others have.
Hoping that counting your blessings and seeing loss as gain will help you to have peaceful hearts when the other got what you want.
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