| | "The advertisers use many additional strategies - visual stimulation and sexual innuendo are but two of the more prominent - yet all these are methods. What we really need to understand is the message. My point is, the message we are given is that we need something. That we really do not need much at all is viewed by advertisers as an obstacle to overcome. They must manufacture need."
Richard A. Swenson, M.D. in his book Margin
"Affluence is the god of twenty-first-century North Americans, and the adman is his prophet."
Ronald J. Sider in his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
The news and events of recent days inform us that America is in a crisis. A financial crisis the like of which most of us have never seen in our lifetimes. That is of course if one believes the hype, which in the interest of being open with my readers I do not believe. But many Americans do have a financial problem, a problem that in many ways has led to the current "crisis" that we face. That financial problem is in all reality a spiritual problem. And that spiritual problem is called greed.
In fairness, greed is not just an American problem. It affects all of mankind, and always has. It was at least one of the problems our original parents succumbed to. They had the ideal environment in Eden, but wanted more. And in the words of a country song from the 1980s we are just carrying on an old family tradition.
Greed is the enemy of at least three virtues commanded by God in scripture.
The first of these is contentment. You can pretty much make a mathematical formula from this. The level of your contentment is inversely proportional to the extent of your greed. The more you desire the less content you are, and the more content you are the less you desire. The above quote from Swenson tells us that advertisers must manufacture need. What they actually manufacture is the sense of need. There is of course no need there at all in most cases. We have no need of a new car, new clothes or whatever the latest fast food craze is. We certainly do not need the newest CD or DVD collection. What the advertisers do is to appeal to that sleeping monster inside of us called greed (or discontent), and sometimes of course it is fully awake anyway. Note that I said they awake the monster, they do not create it for it already exists. Contentment may be their biggest enemy. If I'm content with what I already have, their efforts will fail. This is the problem many Americans have, they are not content with what they have. This is why so many Americans are head over heels in debt. Some of this debt is legitimate, such as medical debts and mortgages (though some of that is excessive also). But much of it has been acquired because of greed. People want more and more stuff so that they will be happy or to impress their friends and neighbors. How far are we removed from the command of Paul in First Timothy 6:8 that if we have food and clothes to be content with that. Paul goes on in that passage to say that the "love of money" is the source (or root) of all sorts of evil and that many because of that (love of money) have wondered away from the faith. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer quotes this verse, but translates "love of money" simply as greed. In these verses love of money/greed is viewed as opposite of contentment and incompatible with the gospel.
The second virtue greed fights against is compassion. Perhaps compassion doesn't really capture the full sense of what I'm trying to say. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the thought I'm aiming at. Jesus best described this virtue in His parable of the Good Samaritan. This lack of compassion can be active, such as exploiting others in order to make a dollar. But more often than not it is passive. Bible teachers have often said that there are two kinds of sin, sins of commission (doing what one isn't supposed to do) and sins of omission (not doing what one is supposed to do), and sins of commission are generally easier to recognize than sins of omission. Let's look at the parable of the Good Samaritan for an example of this. The thieves committed a sin of commission, the priest and levite committed a sin of omission. Only the Samaritan showed compassion (or love). In the parable of the sheep and goats, the sin of the goats is also a sin of omission. Jesus doesn't accuse them of causing Him (or the least of these) to be hungry, naked, sick or homeless. He says they neglected Him when He was hungry, naked, sick and homeless. Many factors lead us to neglect our neighbors in need, but greed and his twin brother selfishness are among the worst. Consider this - every 5 seconds a child in the world dies either directly or indirectly from hunger (and some estimates have it more frequently than every 5 seconds). I was reading on World Vision's website that in some places owning a goat is cause for rejoicing, because it provides milk, its offspring can be sold and it can provide fertilizer for crops. Imagine being excited because you own a goat or two. In some parts of Africa people walk up to 6 miles a day just to get drinking water. I think very few Americans look at these facts and think about how they can get richer by exploiting these people more. But, most simply don't care. We are more concerned about chasing the American dream than we are about those living a third world nightmare. That we may not be able to buy a new car, have to pay a little more for gas for the one we already have, not be able to eat at high priced restaurants as much, or buy any of the luxury items we so enjoy near as much, we consider that to be a "crisis" in America. The fact that in the third world 12 children will die because of hunger in the next 60 seconds, a goat is a prized possession and people may have to walk 6 miles for clean water, well......we just really don't want to think about that. We are too busy thinking about ourselves and that as well is contrary to following Jesus Christ.
There is a third virtue that greed is an enemy of also, and that is humility. I won't expound on this point as I have with the previous two, but let me offer a definition of humility I once heard that I think is accurate. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
Contentment, Love and Humility. If we could fill our proverbial houses with these qualities, there wouldn't be much room for greed and selfishness. May God forgive us for not doing so, and may He enable us to walk in them just as His Son did.
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| | Posted 10/14/2008 4:36 AM - 36 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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