Greed (Part 1 of 3)

This post is part 1 of 3 in our introduction series.
Part 2: Learning Christian Contentment
Part 3: Christian Giving and Generosity

There are many signs in our society that greed has got out of hand. Incomes are double today what they were a generation ago and technology has eased the burden of many routine tasks. We seem to work harder and for longer hours, just to be able to afford to buy luxury items and pay off loans. The rich seem to be getting richer and the poor poorer. The Bible tells us to look after the poor, especially the “fatherless and widows”. Our cities are now full of fatherless teenagers and abandoned wives. And, we in our greed have abandoned then too.

Money is the simplest measure of whether we are winning the game of life. Most people would say that greed is not good. A survey of regular churchgoers found that almost 90% say greed is a sin, yet fewer than 20% say they were ever taught that wanting a lot of money is wrong and almost 80% say that they wish they had more money than they do (reported in “God and Mammon in America” by Robert Wuthnow)

Christian Attitudes to Greed

According to the New Testament, greed qualifies as one of the most serious of sins. The earliest Christians were told not just to avoid greed, but to watch out for it (Luke 12:15), to flee from it (1 Timothy 6:10-11) or to kill it (Colossians 3:5). It is “a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10) and a form of idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

Idolatry is defined as “the worship of idols or excessive love, honour or devotion to someone or something”. Greed and idolatry in the ancient world had a lot in common. First, both focussed attention on items made of gold and silver. Secondly, both the greedy and the idolater visited pagan temples. In the modern world, money and materialism have been elevated to “objects of faith”. In Western society in general, the economy has achieved what can only be described as a status equal to that of the sacred. Like God, the economy it seems, is capable of supplying people’s needs without limit. People today conduct their lives primarily in terms of economic religiosity. The economy is the ultimate source of value and as a religion confers value on those that participate in it.

Traditional religion does not stand a chance against this new religion. It has been pushed to the sidelines. Christians, despite all the warnings in the Gospels, has not even seen the challenge, the temptation, the lies, the enemy. We must consider sometime how the Christian community is unable to discern what is seeking to be the God of the age. The much lamented but seldom resisted commercialisation of the traditional Christian festivals such as Christmas, is a clear example of the takeover strategy of the religion of greed. The most disturbing thing about the fact that greed is idolatry is that hardly anybody owns up to being a worshipper. Imagine the response of disbelief in the local church, if it were revealed that the vast majority of its members were secretly worshipping other gods. Yet, if our analysis of the religion of money is right, the unthinkable may not be far from the truth.

A recent and growing phenomenon on popular Christian teaching is what may be called the “prosperity gospel”. Some preachers in the Western world would encourage people to become Christians because of the material benefits that will surely follow. They say that if you have a healthy attitude towards money, we can all walk in the blessing and prosperity that God intends for us. However, in Romans 5: 1-5, Paul’s gospel, rather than guaranteeing health and wealth, brings something very different, namely hope and hardship. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”

Greed is driven by the following three causes:

Inordinate Love. We have to distinguish between enjoyment of material things, which the Bible takes for granted and nowhere disputes (“God richly provides us with everything to enjoy”, 1 Timothy 6:17b”), and an illegitimate and unhealthy attachment to wealth as an end to itself (“the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils, 1 Timothy 6:10a”). When the Bible condemns the love of money, it does not expect us to be a killjoy; things that are to be heartily enjoyed as part of God’s good creation. Rather the love of material things is to be resisted, when the desire leads to a consuming quest.

Misplaced Trust: The problem with putting our trust and confidence in money is that God gets jealous. Greed is an attack on God’s exclusive rights to our trust and confidence. The foundation of Luther’s understanding of greed as idolatry is laid in his treatment of the first commandment. We are to fear, love and trust God above all things. To obey the first commandment is, according to Luther, to cling to, to rely upon and look only to God for whatever we need in any circumstance. Luther insisted, unbelief go and grow together. The greater the greed the more unbelief and vice versa. Sadly, material prosperity is often accompanied by a loss of trust in God.

Forbidden Service: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24), personifies wealth as an evil and super human power which distracts people from seeing the true God. Greed leads to a lack of love and eventually to pride and even hatred and contempt of human beings. Wealth can exercise an enslaving power. An example is working in a position that is not enjoyable but there is an all- consuming need to pay for the lifestyle that is desired.

The next article will examine the way forward post greed to contentment and then generosity. Such change best comes about by changing the way we think about ourselves, the world and God. This is the strategy Paul recommends in Romans 12:2 “be transformed by the renewal of your mind”.

Prepared by Mel Zerner and adapted from the book “Beyond Greed” written by Brian Rosner who teaches New Testament and ethics at Moore Theological College.