When wanting consumes us

Your neighbor probably doesn't even own an ox. Or a donkey or slaves, so no problem there, either. But these are only details. The heart of the Tenth Commandment is not about that law's very specific, so-1500 B.C. ways not to covet but about the basic human urge to want what somebody else has.

Not that simple wanting is bad. But when wanting turns to envy, when it consumes us enough that we and others can be harmed, that's when we need to be careful, religious leaders say. Still, it's not just about what we do with that coveting; it's also about what Susan Northway calls "the state of our hearts."

In this way, the Tenth Commandment is unlike the other thou-shalt-nots, which prohibit actions rather than thoughts. Coveting is "about our interior selves ... so it's an appropriate culmination of the Ten Commandments," adds Northway, director of the office of religious education for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. And, too, so much of bad human behavior has its roots in the desire to have what isn't ours.

Don't just think of the Ten Commandments as prohibitions, suggests the Salt Lake Theological Seminary's Garry Schmidt. Think of them more as "invitations." If you look at any "thou shalt not" as strictly a law, you'll tend to look "at the fine line between keeping it and not keeping it," in the same way you tend to look at a speed limit ("If I drive 70 in a 65 zone, I probably won't get pulled over.")

In the case of "thou shalt not covet," he says, think of it as invitation to be grateful for what you already have. And an invitation to notice that if you're feeling a bit covetous of your neighbor's leaf-blower or his son's acceptance at Harvard, it's "an invitation to rediscover or build my sense of feeling absolutely loved by God.

"If my sense of who I am is based on the declared love the Holy has for me," Schmidt says, "then instead of coveting what my neighbor has, when I am in my best place I will celebrate these as gifts."

When you feel loved by God, he says, you can say "there's nothing more I need."

The Rev. Leslie Reynolds-Benns is an ordained minister in what she calls Gratitude Fellowship. She also owns Gratitude Press and a consulting business called Gratitude.

"It's the human trait to want what our neighbors have," says the Rev. Reynolds-Benns. "But I haven't done that for a long time. I celebrate people's successes rather than wish I had them." At first she credits her age — she's 66 — but then says this shift away from coveting happened spontaneously about 20 years ago. "It was like a miracle," she says.