Satisfying Our Needs, Gratifying Our Wants
Greed is by definition always wrong. But it is the perversion of something good -- the proper, God-given desire for something basically good. Quite a chunk of Christian (or indeed Jewish) ethics consists of assessing which desires, in which proportion, and on which occasions, it is appropriate to gratify. Our basic instincts, implanted it seems as survival mechanisms, offer a challenge to a different kind of level of human living: the challenge to human maturity and wisdom, in sometimes denying, sometimes stimulating, sometimes celebrating and gratifying, our desires. The definition of greed is the refusal of that maturity and wisdom, and the pursuit of gratification for its own sake irrespective of appropriateness...


