Is Greed the American God?

Released in the HJC Bulletin on 1.10.10.

Money, let’s face it, is about two things: values and control. You can read the level of control people have on their own existence by observing how they embrace money, materials, finances, how they use or abuse the wealth God has given them.

Now, is it wrong to own things? Of course not; and God never says it is. But it’s wrong to let your things end up owning you. If you spend more time polishing your speedboat, your car, or your computer screen than you do with your kids, it owns you. If you spend more time glorying in 21st century technology than engaging and interacting with real flesh and blood people with real flesh and blood problems {and sometimes solutions}, entering their soaring joys and crushing disappointments, it owns you. If you give more of yourself, your soul, your blood-sweat-and-tears to a business, to a corporation, to the Almighty Dollar and the pursuit of the American Dream {success, adulation, applause, luxury} than you give to your family, to a wife or husband, to your children, to the Community of Christians God has given you, your idol owns you. If you spend more time thinking about what you’re going to eat and drink than how you’re going to walk the Master’s Way by service and sacrifice, with faith and humility, a false god has you in its grips.

Maybe we should listen to Paul when he said to the Ephesians, “You can be sure of this: The Kingdom of Christ and of God will never belong to anyone who is impure or greedy, for a greedy person is really an idol worshiper— he loves and worships the good things of this life more than God,” 5:5 {TLB}. Really? Greed is the same as idolatry, worshipping at the altar of a false god, embracing a pseudo-security, deceiving myself into thinking everything’s good with my soul and spirit because my body is ensconced in layers of luxury? Do we …worship and love the good things of the world more than the One who ransomed us from it? Are we …the greedy people who bow down daily before economic idols and ideology? We better find an answer to those questions, and we better find one fast. Our lives in the Spirit of Christ depend on it.