昨天我们提到嫉妒源自两个原因：「无知」和「错误的比较」。看过了「错误的比较」如何形成嫉妒以后，今天我们要集中思想「无知」这一方面的原因。「无知」怎样形成嫉妒呢？太多时候，我们对别人的判断是基于我们所看到的，而没有考虑到他们的生命中其它可能发生的事情。多年前，加德纳（AC Gardiner）写了一篇有关西蒙大法官（Lord Simon）的短文，详细谈论很多关于他成功的事情，其中有一段他描述西蒙大法官是「从一条铺满玫瑰的道路昂首阔步地迈向一个光辉的目标」。加德纳以为像西蒙大法官这种成功人士的路途上，必定没有任何伤痛的经历，但是后来他记起西蒙大法官也曾经面对过一些十分痛苦的失望，于是他在文章内加上一句附注：「我在这里所指的只不过是他公开的事业。」

我们很多人都忘记了那句附注。我们只看到邻居生活的表面，对他们隐藏的忧伤一无所知。如果能仔细看到我们所嫉妒的生活层面以下的实况，看到那些隐而未现的伤害、空虚、心痛、罪疚和恐惧，我怀疑我们内心还会不会存有嫉妒的情绪？

无论别人有没有隐藏的忧伤，我们也没有理由嫉妒别人。神是所有生命真正的主宰：「我们是他造的，不是自己造的」（诗一零零3）。让我们只定睛在基督身上，抗拒所有与人比较的试探。要多学习把自己与神比较，这样的比较才是唯有有益的比较。

Yesterday we said that envy is born out of two things: ignorance and making wrong comparisons. Having seen how a wrong comparison can produce envy, we focus now on ignorance. How can ignorance give rise to envy? Far too often our judgments of people are based only on what we see, and we fail to take into account other things that may be going on in their lives. Years ago, A.C. Gardiner wrote a little essay on Lord Simon and spoke at length of his many successes. In one place he described him as "prancing down a rose-strewn path to a shining goal". Gardiner thought that success, in the measure Lord Simon had experienced it, was free of all sorrow. Then he remembered some of the bitter disappointments that Lord Simon had faced and so he added in parenthesis: "I speak here only of his public career."

Many of us forget the parenthesis. We see simply the surface of our neighbours' lives and know nothing of their secret sorrows. If we saw beneath the surface of those lives we tend to envy - the hidden hurts, the emptiness, the heartaches, the guilt and the fears - then I doubt whether the emotion of envy would ever rise within us.

But even if there were no secret sorrows we would still have no reason to envy others. God is the rightful Lord of all life: "It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves" (Psa. 100:3, NKJ). Let us keep our eyes fixed only on Christ and resist all other attempts at comparison. Practise comparing yourself with Him, and only good will come out of it.