Jealousy is resentment towrds someone for a feeling of advantage of superiority they hold, or even for certain achievements. Jealousy brings hatred instead of progress; if you are jealous of a friend, you will look for the downfall of such friend. The best thing to do is to avoid being jealous of another person. As children of God, you must stay away and keep away from bad intention to harm anyone who has an advantage, superiority or achievement over you. You should not get jealous to the point of having or carrying out evil plans against others.
Jealousy can be evil when;
1. It leads to unhealthy competition with others and the only alternative you think of is to do evil against them.
2. It leads to unnecessary envy of the success and progress of others
3. It leads to strife with others over things that are meaningless and purposeless
4. You wish to become the head and best among others by evil means
5. You begin to feel insecure
6. It generates fear, anger, resentment, inadequacy, hopelessness.
Negative effects of jealousy
Jealousy has the power to affect one psychologically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually in the following ways.
1. Decreasing someone's perceived self worth: when you become unnecessarily jealous of another person, you are devaluing yourself and you place yourself at a very low self-esteem and your worth as a person will be decreasing.
2. Emotional instability
Jealousy will destabilize you emotionally because whenever you see the person you are jealous of, your mood will change and you will be nurturing hatred which is not good for your health
3. Broken relationship
If you are jealous of your friends, your relationship with the person will never grow. The relationship will be broken and this will have a negative effect on how you relate with people
4. Depression
You will be depressed and frustrated if you are jealous of somebody and the person keeps succeeding. No matter how you try to outrun the person you will always feel down
How to avoid the evil of jealousy
1. Be born again. The first step to avoid jealousy is for you to be a genuine child of God and surrender your totality to Jesus Christ. Christ will save you from every work of the flesh
2. Seek the help of the holy spirit. Jesus Christ promised to give us the holy spirit to guide and direct us. Through the help of the holy spirit, you can avoid jealousy
3. Control your mind. Let your mind be under control; do not covet anybody's achievement or possessions. Take your mind away from what brings jealousy and focus on what makes you better.
4. Seek advice. Talk to a godly counselor about it. Do not seek counsel from someone who will mislead you but seek wise counsel from godly people
5. Practice these principles to distract yourself from jealous feeling, thought and action
1. Write down on paper what/how you feel
2. Write down what you want
3. Take a walk from the situation
4. Put someone else in your shoe and try to give godly counsel
5. See yourself as God will do and act so that God will be pleased.
Jealousy most times cannot be avoided but it should not lead to evil behavior and practices that will endanger someone else's life as a result of your insecurity and inferiority. You must understand that you are unique and special in your own way, so is everyone on earth. Therefore, there is no need to be jealous of anyone.
Jealousy is another way we tend to limit ourselves in one position. Once there is jealousy, there can never be true growth or unity