Wednesday Night – Feb 29 – we will be discussing Jealousy and trying to answer the question – “Is it OK to be Jealous?”  

      The most obvious answer is NO.  The 10^th Commandment (Exodus 20:17 “Thou shalt not covet”  seems to forbid the whole idea of jealousy and envy of others. Genesis 37 tells the story of how Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him and how jealousy became the gateway sin to many others (like attempted murder, kidnapping, human trafficing, lying, etc). In the New Testament, there are several Scriptures where jealousy is listed as a sin – like Galatians 5:19  “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,  20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”  In the famous “Love” chapter – 1 Corinthians 13 – it says in verse 4 (NLT) “Love is not jealous.”   

      But after working thru all these examples of jealousy being a sin, we find Exodus 34:14 “for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

      Needless to say, this is a little confusing – so confusing that it even confused someone who claims to be so spiritually enlightened as Oprah Winfrey. In 2009, in a TV series called “Best Life, Finding your Spiritual Path”, she said “I will say I was one of those people who used to go to church every – I grew up, as I was sharing with the last caller, you know, in the South and so going to church every Sunday, Sunday School, Baptist Training Union, Wednesday night prayer service, the whole thing, choir, all of it. And when I moved to Baltimore, I was in my 20s, and I remember sitting in a church, you know, one of those big churches where you have to get there at, you know, 6:30 in the morning to line up for 8 o’clock service, and the minister was preaching about-it was a really good preacher-and he was preaching about how God-‘the Lord thy God was a jealous God and the Lord thy God would condemn us for whatever,’ and I remember I-I had a spiritual aha!  There. And I was in my late 20s, and I suddenly thought, ‘How can this God who is all loving and all powerful, why would God be jealous of me?'”

    This idea of a Jealous God was so troubling to her that she converted from being a Baptist and became a New Ager. 

      Please come to our group on Wednesday night to help sort this out.

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