The Green-Eyed Jelly Monster

• Kimi and I recently discussed at length the sin of jealousy- the next day I watched a beautiful young, thin woman in a spectacular jade ballgown gobbled by the jelly monster. Her radiance shifted to green-eyed-envy when she observed a similarly spectacularly dressed young woman walk into the room. The change was so unattractive and the imagination of how badly a jealous expression must look on me led to my gospel study of the topic—so I apologize for the length.
• Screwtape explains the tactics of devils:
• “We (Satan’s Minions) now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female’s chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children. And this is not all. We have engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be […] As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!”
• Screwtape goes on to explain that each man desires two women- a terrestrial one and an infernal venus. The terrestrial woman mixed with charity, obedience to marriage, naturalness and golden reverence lead the man to God. The infernal venus, which he is trained to desire as it is hardly in existence, will lead him to a very lasting and exquisite kind of unhappiness.
• -Screwtape Letters, p.59-60; C.S. Lewis
• So I figure, I have two choices—will I work and think myself into the terrestrial woman that leads men to God or will I work and try to make myself into an infernal venus-who in actuality can never exist because of the dictates of nature—and also who, if I try to become, will lead men away from lasting love, happiness, marriage, and God.
• Since I have been at least partially manipulated by the world, I confess “the idea” of being an infernal venus has some draw to it, but with a little faith, I can shift my focus and try to “strip myself of envy”.
• Proverbs 14:30
• “A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.”
• -I have enough rotting on my body right now, I think I’d like to keep my bones. When I am trying to be the infernal Venus, I will always be jealous, critical, cruel, and resentful. When I am trying to be a woman that brings herself and her man to God, I am charitable, kind, and grateful. And nothing beats this promise.
• “And again, verily I say unto you that it is your privilege, and a promise I give unto you […]that inasmuch as you strip yourselves from jealousies and fears, and humble yourselves before me, for ye are not sufficiently humble, the veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual.” D&C 67:10
• So here goes my prayer to fight jealousy and fear with charity and gratitude so that I can see and know God. I think it might make me more attractive to have a little more of His image in my face and a little less of the green-eyed-jelly-monster’s. Who’s with me?