Ignoring the Biblical Teaching about Greed

On a variety of subjects I regularly hear about how people ignore the plain teaching of scripture. I’d like to take away the phrases “the Bible clearly teaches” and “the plain teaching of scripture” from conservatives, while taking “we don’t take that literally” away from liberals. Then maybe we could get around to discussing the nuances and appropriate social contexts for some biblical materials.

But one thing that I hear about much more rarely is the sin of greed, surely one of the things Jesus talked about very frequently in a number of different ways. I’d like to nominate “committing all that I possess to God” as a pretty clear teaching of Jesus.

Nobody is really saying “greed is good” using the word. Instead, we justify greedy actions by ourselves and others. I’d be very shocked to learn that more than a couple of percent of the possessions of the Christians in the United States was committed to God (or the church), and of what’s committed to the church, a significant amount is used in a self-centered manner.

Perhaps this would be an important topic on which to make a new commitment as we observe commercialism and greed used as a way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who had no place to lay his head.

That was all launched as I was looking back through Christmas stories from my fiction blop (The Jevlir Caravansary), and found How Scrooge Got It All Wrong.

You see, what Scrooge really needed was some good, modern business advice!