Contemporary Views of Jealousy In spite of the considerable emphasis on the jealousy of God, and godly human jealousy in the Bible, the common understanding of jealousy in the secular and Christian realms is mostly negative. A survey of the relevant literature shows relatively little written on this subject.37 When it is dealt with in secular literature, jealousy is often seen as the main cause of wife abuse and is generally considered a destructive primitive emotion for God or mankind to exhibit.