"Find out how much God has given you and take from it what you need. The remainder which you do not require is needed by others...Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others." (St. Augustine)
The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy tells a parable in Man and Dame of Greed. A man named Fortune was told by a landowner that he could have the right to all the land which he could plow one furrow around in a single day. At sunup, Fortune started off with great vigor. He had already calculated that amount which he could encompass and then maintain and grow crops on. But as the day progressed, he desired just a bit more and then more...so he plowed well beyond his calculated boundaries, his appetite for more land became insatiable. Near the end of daylight, Fortune was far away from his departure point, so he pushed with incredible passion and superhuman drive. As the sun went down, Fortune's plow crossed the line but he did not. Fortune died of a heart attack only yards from the finish. What he gained in the end was a plot of land which measured three-by-six feet, all that he needed to be buried in.
This parable is helpful because it tells the truth about humanity's never-ending struggle with the Fifth Deadly Sin--Avarice.
Of all the Seven Deadly Sins (remember, they are pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust), I suspect avarice is the most popular these days, for it gets lots of press. We watched greedy looting of shops and stores during the Los Angeles riots, we read regularly about the avarice of "Wall Street" business deals and, if the truth be known, we all struggle with wanting, buying and possessing too much.
What is this Fifth Deadly Sin we know as avarice? A few reflections and definitions to help get us started thinking.
Our most helpful guide, Henry Faerlie (The Seven Deadly Sins Today) handily divides the seven sins into two categories separated by the sin of sloth. They are the three cold sins of perverted love: pride, envy, and anger; and the three warms sins of excessive love: avarice, gluttony and lust. Sloth sits in-between as non-love. The warm sins of avarice, gluttony and lust are the sins of the Prodigal Son who greedily demanded his inheritance and then squandered it (and himself) in excessive love of life (gluttony and lust).
The basic definition of avarice presents two sides of this deadly sin: one seeking to lose oneself, the other seeking to exalt. The first is perhaps the most common image of avarice. It is Silas Marner, The Miser, "reaching his arms around a pile of coins embracing and forever counting." If there are any windows where the miser counts, they are closed and shuttered and the door to his home is always bolted. It is no accident, says Faerlie, "that miser comes from the Latin root Miser = misery."
But perhaps the greatest literary caricature of the pinched miser losing himself in his wealth is Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge, the envy of all his contemporaries, yet the most miserable of all creatures. And how often we read about some poor soul who has died alone, seemingly poor and penniless, leaving an apartment or house filled with unused money hoarded over a lifetime.
I suspect there is a bit of the Miser in all of us when we are tempted to lose ourselves behind a wall of money or goods. Holding and counting can become a wall of security behind which we hide from the world and worse yet, from God.
While the Miser is a classic definition of the Fifth Deadly Sin, it is really the second side of avarice which infects our modern world. It is a disease of disastrous proportions. For modern avarice is inordinate self-love seeking not to lose oneself, but to exalt oneself by acquiring and possessing things and wealth and power. And with this modern definition of avarice, we shall also use its more familiar synonym Greed. When we say that word I suspect we immediately think about the world of business.
As many of you know, I have spent the past five years speaking to and with the world of business about Ethics and Morality. Along with the subject of Lying (not telling the truth), the subject of Greed inevitably emerges as a hot issue. What makes corporate stories of greed powerful is the overwhelming picture of men so obsessed with wealth, power and success that they lose complete touch with reality and eventually themselves.
High-level scandals have shaken the world of business but, unfortunately, have not transformed it. As I talk with business men and women, there still exists a strong need to "make it," to look out for number one, self-advancement at any cost; I'll get mine while the getting is good in this tough competitive world.
Now lest we sit too comfortably in our armchairs watching the greedy business world out there, let's look inward at our own personal struggles with this ubiquitous Deadly Sin. Let's face it, we are all born restless, hungry and unsatisfied. Within all of us exists what's been called a "God-shaped vacuum," and no matter what we have, see, touch or taste, it is never quite enough, it never truly fills us. We learn to stuff our minds and our stomachs, our banks, barns and even our hours and yet we thirst and hunger for more.
The fact is, greed infects most of us in one way or another, as we pursue our need for status, recognition, success and even emotional fulfillment. We all know people who have become their possessions, who no longer possess them but are possessed by them. And keep in mind that along with goods, greed exalts through power, success and status as well.
For most of us, greed's damage is interior, it erodes slowly from within as we continue to feed its insatiable appetite. A few thoughts from my reading and my own personal experience about greed's effects.
Greed erodes trust--our trust in the goodness of the world and the people who surround us. Like the Miser, Silas Marner, we begin to retreat into our little world of collecting, possessing and counting. Jesus said so well in Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, "Be careful where you put your treasure, for there also will be your heart. So do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where rust consumes and thieves break in."
Greed breeds within us hardness of heart to those in need. Greed in any form, whether possessions, power or status, walls us from the poor. Eventually ghettos are formed and filled and we don't care any longer because "we got ours!"
Like all forms of sin, greed distracts us from ourselves and from God. "The Latin word distractus means 'torn apart' and that is the power of greed," says Henry Faerlie, "to alienate us from our interior spiritual life, to tear us away from God's presence." When we pursue physical goods or emotional success with inordinate single-mindedness, our tendency is to starve our spiritual nature which will wither away just as an unfed body withers.
Greed is waste. Much of what we collect and possess is either hidden away for nobody's use or turned into incredible waste heaps. Like it or not, facing the sin of greed forces us to look at our use of the resources of God's creation. Greed is inexorably linked to emerging environment concerns.
Remember, though, that for each Deadly Sin there exists a Godly virtue or two. What is the opposite of Greed? I'll opt for two words: Simplicity and Generosity.
Now with all the strong words and images of greed heavy on our hearts, let's remember that goods and possessions, wealth and success are not bad in themselves. All of God's world was created for good and for our pleasure. Sin is the misuse of that creation and inordinate desire for more than we ever need. So as we struggle with greed, perhaps the best thing for us is to pay more attention to what we are doing with our possessions and our power.
St. Augustine put it very well:
"Find out how much God has given you and take from it what you need. The remainder which you do not require is needed by others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others."
I also rather like what baseball manager Leo Durocher said about living simply, "You gotta keep your balance. Life's like holding a bird in your hand; hold it too loosely and it will fly away; hold it too tightly and you kill it."
I learned something about simplicity during a recent visit with my parents in Florida. Each time I've visited them over the past few years, my parents have sent something of value home with me (clothes, china, jewelry). This time it suddenly dawned on me that they are progressively giving away everything they have collected over a lifetime. "You can't take it with you," said Mom, an old and trite phrase and yet so true! Maybe one secret of controlling greed is to learn earlier on in life to give away as well as collect, to place our goods and possessions and even our status in movement, coming and going, so that they don't control us, but we control them.
As I talked about this with a friend, she shared that the most important time in her life was when she made the hard decision following a divorce to sell all her household possessions and live simply. "I was my house," she said, "and once I had unloaded the burden of my possessions, I was free. It changed my whole life. Now I find my value inside of me."
Finally, remember the simple words of our Gospel, The New Commandment of Jesus to love one another as He loves us. It is the only path of true fulfillment. The love of a little girl saved Silas Marner, the love of Tiny Tim brought Ebenezer Scrooge to his knees, and it was the Christian love of four people which saved the truck driver on a Los Angeles street during the recent riots. It is only the love of God which will satisfy us all.
"I thirst after Thee oh God for Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."
Amen.
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