We can’t reasonably condemn families who have long wanted the security of a house they can call their own, and have stretched themselves to finance a loan when interest rates seemed to warrant it. Most of us started out that way when we bought our first home. In the prelude to the current housing crisis, some may have been imprudent, even financially naïve, but they weren’t necessarily greedy.

The same can‘t be said for those who sought properties far beyond their needs and means, who knowingly took risks they couldn’t afford to take, who hoped for a killing on resale and were left holding a foreclosure notice. Or the lending companies in search of a hefty and easy profit who pushed loans at inexperienced and unqualified buyers knowing those buyers would be vulnerable when the market shifted. At every step in the process there were people who exploited every chance they could for making a dollar and who shunted legal and ethical questions aside. They made a packet of money in the process. That’s greed.

Ironically, the acquisition of material wealth beyond a certain level of security and comfort doesn’t correlate with how happy we are. Greedy people always seem dissatisfied with their lot, and pursuit of more and more material possessions becomes their driving purpose in life.

The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes notes: “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase.”

Jesus himself said: “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”

For people whose faith is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ, the balancing of reasonable material comforts and spiritual values isn’t as much a matter of choosing between them as it is of establishing priorities. In the famous Bible story of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he needs to do to inherit eternal life, the initial answer is simple: keep the commandments. Only when the young man persists, when he says he is already keeping the commandments and asks, “What lack I yet,” does Jesus deliver the challenge to sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus discerns precisely the right test for precisely the right person at precisely the right moment. The young man’s problem isn’t his wealth but his attachment to it. He has his priorities wrong. He wants his material comforts, and then wonders how he can fit God into his life. Jesus asks him – and asks us – to turn that around. First, we should seek “the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” then other things “will be added unto us.”

Translation: We should aim, by all means, to improve ourselves and seek for basic material security and comforts for our families. But we should not let the possession or the relentless pursuit of material possessions obscure our obligations to God and our fellow men and women. Maintaining a clear understanding of the difference between need and greed is one of the most basic challenges of those who would live “in the world, but not of it.”