RSS Feed
Madoff's Greed, and Ours
While many Christians run down the things that are an abomination to God, they forget that listed among the things that God hates is greed.
Too often when the "haves" don't have enough, they get greedy and decide to take advantage of the "have-nots." The Bible is filled with stories like that, and with admonishments by God that the poor and oppressed are not being taken care of because some people are too greedy.
I am thinking about this because Bernard Madoff was sentenced this week to 150 years in prison, and I was glad. It was nothing but sheer greed that motivated Madoff to take advantage of people who trusted him, and now, because of his greed, those people's lives are in ruins.
It is amazing to me how we, the human species, cannot seem to get enough of anything. We are greedy for more and more of anything we deem a good thing. It seems that Michael Jackson may have been addicted to prescription drugs, and the reports are that prescription drug addiction is a worse problem than street drug addiction.
Greed produces gamblers, people addicted to sex, food, and alcohol. We have spirits, it seems, that cannot be satisfied.
The only thing we are not greedy for is God.
I wondered aloud this week if God was enough for us, and my answer to myself is that for many to most of us, God is not. God is supposed to fill the empty spaces, the spaces that make us want more and more of what can be taken away, things like money and cars and boats and houses and a euphoric state caused by drugs or alcohol.
God stands waiting with his/her arms outstretched, and we keep walking past the source of our ultimate satisfaction.
The Beatitudes say, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. (italics mine)
God can fill us, if we believe the scriptures.
Greed is a terminal condition of the human spirit. It is only terminal, though, because we will not go to the Source of ultimate satisfaction. We continue to believe that things, and not God, will give us peace. We continue to praise God with our mouths but to put God down and on the back burner with our actions.
Bernard Madoff will go to a physical prison. The fact of the matter is that many of us are in self-imposed spiritual and economic prison, because we have chosen to live a life of greed rather than grace.
That is a sad commentary on us who call ourselves "believers."
By
Susan K. Smith
|
June 29, 2009; 2:44 PM ET
Share This: 
Technorati
| Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: Faithful Fellowship on C Street |
Next: The Scarlet Letter For Politicians
Posted by: free_thinker | June 30, 2009 8:38 AM
Report Offensive Comment
The comments to this entry are closed.
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" - I can still recall how this slight passage, gleaned from the movie, "Wall Street" transfixed me in the late 80's; fostering my pursuit of being a player on Wall Street and getting my due share of the "American dream". Luckily (or unluckily) I never pursued that avenue. How did that declaration, made over 20 years ago, become our mantra that subsequently fueled our economic boom and later (now) morphed into the signature of our age? Are we any worse than any other gilded age of the past, or is this just an indictment of our true essence? God promotes and encourages the act of goodwill and altruism, as a basic tenant of His (gender neutral) theology. However, the very act by which some profited and prospered at the cost of others only provides a sad epilogue to our most recent gilded age.