The Malicious Myth of the Greener Grass

Have you ever been mowing your yard, glanced over at your neighbors’ lawn, and thought, ‘Why’s their grass so much greener than mine?’ Then a few days later you walk over for a brief visit and notice that up close, their lawn doesn’t look any better than yours? It has weeds and bare patches, too.

 

This tendency to compare what we have with what we don’t isn’t limited to front yard greenery. A friend or coworker might drive up in a new car and suddenly you feel a pang of envy. Your six-year-old sedan or SUV, which has been running perfectly well, doesn’t seem as nice as it did just minutes before. Even if you’ve paid off your car loan while they now have a huge monthly car payment.

 

You go to church as see that picture-perfect couple again. They always look adoringly at each other, their kids are well-mannered, and they just seem to have it all together. By comparison, you feel that with your marriage and family, if you ever had it together you must have forgotten where you put it.

 

Some folks always seem to have it better off than we do. Maybe it’s a more exciting job, or a nicer house, a more prestigious education, or more extravagant vacations. The list could go on. ‘Why them, and not me?’ we might be tempted to ask.

 

This could be why the very last of the commandments God wrote on the stone tablets He entrusted to Moses to pass along to the Israelites – the Big 10 – was a prohibition against coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).

 

Even if we don’t have manservants, maidservants, oxen or donkeys, that doesn’t keep us from casting an envious eye at other things that someone we know has. ‘Greener grass’ seems everywhere we look.

 

Interestingly, this tendency isn’t limited to the human species. Years ago, I teamed with my friend, Ken Johnson, to co-author a book, Pursuing Life with a Shepherd’s Heart, about experiences he and his family had in raising a small flock of sheep on their little farm outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. The focus of the book was to show how much sheep are like people – and vice versa.

Among the insightful illustrations Ken presented was what we could have called “The Case of the Greener Grass.” One summer the region where Ken lived was enduring a severe drought. His sheep had consumed nearly all of the grass in their pasture areas, so he and his family decided to build a temporary fence and let the sheep graze on the spacious yard beside his house.

 

After laboring all morning to make certain the new fence was sturdy and secure, Ken and his family went inside for lunch. Minutes later he looked out a window and saw all of the sheep lined up along the fence, their heads poking through it and straining for the ‘greener grass’ on the other side.

 

The grass just beyond their reach wasn’t any different from the grass they were standing on. To make matters worse, they were ruining the grass beneath their cloven hooves.

 

It seems one of the manifestations of what the Bible terms our “sinful nature” (Romans 7:25, Colossians 2:11) is our propensity to compare and covet what other people possess. Often to the detriment of ourselves and others.

 

Family counselor J. Allan Petersen termed this The Myth of the Greener Grass in his 1984 book, writing specifically about extramarital affairs – people ruining their marriages by the attraction of someone that seems more alluring and exciting. It’s a malicious myth, for sure.

 

Concerning this, in the midst of his sufferings and responding to his friends’ not-so-helpful advice, Job declared, “I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman” (Job 31:1). Refusing to look and compare can prevent a lot of unnecessary pain.

 

What’s the best safeguard against being seduced by the myth of the greener grass, whatever the context might be? I can’t think of anything more fitting than the counsel of 1 John 2:15-16, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

 

This is excellent counsel. The alternative is to be like the sheep, trampling the healthy ‘grass’ right where we are – our marriages, families, careers, our very lives – in the pursuit of the ‘greener grass’ that’s beyond our reach.