Greed

If we look at our current social climate it is one can see that greed is worst enemy. Out of the Seven Deadly Sins greed is the one that hard to grasp because it fuels other sins. Greed is the gasoline on the fire to sins. Greed turns love into lust, leisure into sloth, hunger into gluttony, honor into pride, righteous indignation into anger, and admiration into envy.  Greed tends to be private, stingy because there is something about Greed that puts us in competition with our neighbors and ultimately in alienation from them.  We all want more. We live by the motto of is a little is good then a lot is even better.  Simply stated the more we have the more we want. To feel better about our own greed is we tend to justify it by deflecting to corporate greed.  Isn’t the real problem of with our society is those fat cats on Wall Street? They are greedy, not us in church. The problem is desires have a way of mimicking need. In the marketing game the trick is to move us from what we desire to what we need. We live in a society ruled by the Constitution that gives us all certain rights. The sole purpose of this democracy is to give us our rights. Perhaps we are among  the first generation in our society to realize that desire has a way of being elevated to the level of need and needs gets further inflated to the level of rights. Our rights are this ever expanding list because our desires are bottomless.  I means isn’t it everyone’s right to own a cell phone. Perhaps we should starting thinking about the church as teaching us about our desires. It is here we learn how to want the right amount, things in the right way and in the right proportions. We need the type of character that is able to look at the world and all it has to offer and at certain key moments simply say, “Thank you but I am now satisfied.” It takes a huge amount of moral stamina to say, “yes I can afford it, but we are not going to buy it, because it does little to contribute to the basic goodness of our lives.” The Christian faith says that church is not about getting what we want but rather getting what God wants. When we do this God has a good time. We grab and consume, to a great degree, because we do not really know what we want, and so we grab everything in desperate fear that we might say no to the one thing that might give our lives some meaning. We need to as Jesus put it “have in mind the concerns of God and not the concerns of humanity.” Jesus reminds us that while the two maybe as one, the world in which we live in will constantly try to stretch, wear down, or erode their commonality. Greed will slowly drag us into other sins. Let us not be trapped. Let us teach our children and grandchildren well and let us receive the joy and peace that is only found in God’s way.. Join us as we uncover the dangers of sin and what we can do so God can have a good time..

Hope to see you in service..

Shalom,

Tommy