Good stories about envy are rarely about wanting a thing. They are about wanting to be someone else, and about the resentment that grows when other people seem to have the power, praise or position we think we deserve. "A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones" (Proverbs 14:30). The two illustrations below show exactly how that rot sets in.
The first is an old folk tale about a stone cutter who keeps wishing to be something more powerful. The second is the true story of a Dutch painter who could not bear to be overlooked, and who ended up fooling the art world and the Nazis. Both are retold in full in our own words, each with a takeaway for preaching or reflection.
Stories in this post:
The Stone Cutter Who Wanted to Be Someone Else
This is a traditional folk tale, usually described as Japanese in origin. It became well known in the West after the Dutch writer Multatuli included a version of it in his novel Max Havelaar (1860).
There was once a stone cutter who was unhappy with himself and with his place in life.
One day he walked past the house of a wealthy merchant. Through the open gateway he saw beautiful possessions and important visitors coming and going. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He felt a wave of envy and wished that he could be like him.
To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant. He enjoyed more luxury and more power than he had ever imagined. But he was also envied and despised by everyone poorer than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, surrounded by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, however rich, had to bow low as the procession went by. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish I could be a high official!"
Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people around him. It was a hot summer day, and the official felt miserable and sticky inside his chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, not the least bit troubled by him. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish I could be the sun!"
Then he became the sun. He blazed down fiercely on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by farmers and labourers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, and his light could no longer reach the ground. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish I could be a cloud!"
Then he became the cloud. He flooded the fields and villages, and everyone shouted at him. But soon he felt himself being pushed away by some great force, and he realised it was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he thought. "I wish I could be the wind!"
Then he became the wind. He blew tiles off roofs and tore up trees, feared and hated by everyone below. But after a while he ran into something that would not move, no matter how hard he blew against it: a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish I could be a rock!"
Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer driving a chisel into his hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.
He looked down and saw, far below him, the figure of a stone cutter.
Takeaway: Envy always looks upward and never looks inward. The stone cutter spent his whole journey wishing to be someone else, only to discover that what he had been at the start was exactly what he was looking for. Paul learned "to be content whatever the circumstances" (Philippians 4:11-13). What gift or calling of yours are you overlooking because you are busy envying someone else's?
Source: traditional folk tale, author unknown.
The Greatest Forger: An Artist With a Grudge
It may be the greatest hoax in the history of art, and it began with envy. Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter working before the Second World War. He was technically gifted, but the critics of his day mercilessly panned his exhibitions. They saw his work as old-fashioned. One critic famously wrote that he had "every virtue except originality" (Wikipedia).
Van Meegeren was stung, and he decided to strike back. If the experts would not admire his own paintings, he would make them admire his work without knowing it. He painted a large religious scene in the style of the great seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, called it The Supper at Emmaus, and arranged for it to be shown to the most respected Vermeer expert in the country, the elderly critic Abraham Bredius.
Bredius took the bait completely. In 1937 he wrote in The Burlington Magazine that "it is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master," and he declared it to be "the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft." The art world gasped. The Rembrandt Society bought the painting for 520,000 guilders, a fortune at the time, and gave it to the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, where it was given pride of place in a major exhibition of four hundred years of European art.
Van Meegeren's plan had been to reveal the forgery at that moment and humiliate the critics who had scorned him. Their reputations would be shattered. But envy has a way of turning into greed. Instead of confessing, he kept quiet and painted more "Vermeers," earning millions. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands he even sold one of them, Christ with the Adulteress, to Hermann Göring, Hitler's second-in-command, who handed over 137 looted paintings in exchange.
That sale nearly destroyed him. After the war the Allies set out to return the artworks the Nazis had collected to their rightful owners. Records led investigators to van Meegeren, and they wanted to know where he had obtained a national treasure to sell to the enemy. On 29 May 1945 he was arrested on charges that included collaborating with the enemy. Selling Dutch cultural heritage to the Nazis was treason, and treason could mean the death penalty.
Facing that possibility in prison, van Meegeren finally told the truth. He had not sold a Vermeer to Göring at all, he said. He had painted it himself. Nobody believed him. The experts insisted the paintings were genuine. So the only way to save his life was to forge again. Under the eyes of witnesses, he spent months painting a new "Vermeer," Jesus Among the Doctors, literally painting for his life.
The final twist is that the man who had been accused of betraying his country became something of a national hero. He had fooled the Nazis and made Göring look ridiculous. The treason charge fell away. In November 1947 he was convicted only of forgery and fraud and sentenced to one year in prison, but he died of a heart attack on 30 December 1947, before he served it.
Takeaway: Van Meegeren's talent was real. What poisoned it was resentment: he could not bear that others were praised while he was dismissed. Envy did not make him greater; it turned him into a counterfeit of someone else. "Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice" (James 3:16). Is there someone whose success you secretly resent, and what might it be doing to you?
Source: "The forger who fooled the world," The Telegraph, 5 August 2006. Additional details from the historical record of van Meegeren's trial.
Final thoughts
A stone cutter who climbed through every kind of power only to end up where he began, and a gifted painter who wasted his gifts trying to prove his critics wrong. These stories about envy show the same pattern. Envy promises that we will be happy once we have what someone else has. It never keeps that promise.
The cure is not to stop wanting anything, but to receive our own life as a gift. When we stop comparing, we finally have the freedom to become who God made us to be. Who have you been comparing yourself with lately?
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These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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