Leo Tolstoy once wrote a story about a successful peasant farmer who was not satisfied with his lot. He wanted more of everything. One day he received a novel offer. For 1000 rubles, he could buy all the land he could walk around in a day. The only catch in the deal was that he had to be back at his starting point by sundown.
Early the next morning he started out walking at a fast pace. By midday he was very tired, but he kept going, covering more and more ground. Well into the afternoon he realized that his greed had taken him far from the starting point. He quickened his pace and as the sun began to sink low in the sky, he began to run, knowing that if he did not make it back by sundown the opportunity to become an even bigger landholder would be lost.
As the sun began to sink below the horizon he came within sight of the finish line. Gasping for breath, his heart pounding, he called upon every bit of strength left in his body and staggered across the line just before the sun disappeared. He immediately collapsed, blood streaming from his mouth. In a few minutes he was dead.
Afterwards, his servants dug a grave. It was not much over six feet long and three feet wide (Bits & Pieces, November, 1991).
What is Avarice?
The apostle Judas found a similar reward as the peasant farmer, as does everyone else who commits the deadly sin of avarice. But what is it? Avarice is the self-serving and inordinate love of and desire for money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions. This results in a constant craving for things—a covetousness or greed—that makes us want to own and hoard things, and further results in an attachment to them that causes us immense grief when having to be parted from them.
Matthew tells of a young man who had such a problem (see Matthew 19:16-29). This man once asked Jesus what he needed to do to gain eternal life. “Well,” Jesus answered. “You know the law. ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ Do these things and you got it made.”
“I do all these things,” the young man said, rather self-righteously. “What else do I need to do?”
I imagine Jesus giving him a long, searching look before answering, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth and he couldn’t bear to give it up.
Then Jesus said to his apostles, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Would we be able to be parted from our wealth? Or the other things we are attached to? Avarice is extremely possessive. It takes our basic need of security and ownership to perverse levels, making us work for them rather than have them work for us. We end up craving for things, very often belonging to others, accumulating them, and then refusing to part with them, having become immensely attached to them.
What do you own that you cannot be parted from? Is it your collection of books or movies? Do you find it difficult to lend them? And if you do, are you able to rest easy until they are returned? How about the curios that adorn your showcase? What if one of them breaks? Does your heart break with it? What about a treasured item of jewelry? If it goes missing do you turn your house upside down trying to find it, getting increasingly desperate with every moment? What about your house, itself? If you had to suddenly leave it one day, how difficult would it be for you to walk away and not look back?
Lot’s wife found it extremely difficult (see Genesis 19:1-29). Before he destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent an angel down to tell Lot to get out with his family because he was found righteous in the sight of God. When they had come out of the city, the angel told the company of people: “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.” Lot’s wife, however, couldn’t resist stealing a look back at the city of pleasure she was leaving behind, and all the possessions she had in it—and instantly became a pillar of salt.
There is a strong moral to this story. Inordinate attachment to material things can lead to a perversion of the soul. Greed makes one mean spirited and obnoxious and our literature is replete with stories of men like that: Scrooge, King Midas, Silas Marner, the Grinch. We find ourselves detesting these men and rejoicing when they change, very often not realizing how much we mirror them.
False Gods
The first of the Ten Commandments given to Moses says: “I am the LORD your God ... you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3).
“Other gods” include anything that we set up in our hearts before God and this includes all these things we spoke about. Jesus tells us: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). The Revised Standard Version uses the word “mammon” instead of “money”, which Merriam-Webster defines as “material wealth or possessions especially as having a debasing influence.”
When we set up other gods in our lives, they begin to demand sacrifice and it takes a lot to satisfy them. We end up lying, cheating, stealing, and even killing to appease these gods. We betray the confidence of those who trust us, even setting them up for a fall.
There are many examples that illustrate this particular truth in Scripture, the most notable one being Judas. His greed turned him into a thief (cf. John 12:6), and then a betrayer, selling his friend Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver (cf. Matthew 26:15).
Greed can make us do a lot of wicked things. A survey in the United States conducted by James Patterson and Peter Kim a few years ago (The Day America Told the Truth) revealed what some people were willing to do for money. In exchange for $10,000,000, 25% of the people surveyed said they would be willing to abandon their entire family, 25% said they would be prepared to abandon their church, 23% said they would become prostitutes for a week or more, 16% said they would give up their citizenship, and 7% said they would be willing to kill a stranger!
Many were prepared to do other things, but just think about that last one a bit. Out of every hundred people in the United States of America, there are seven who would be willing to kill you, a total stranger, for money. I figure that gives us a very nice perspective on greed and what people are willing to do for it! But is money going to make us happy? It didn’t make Judas happy. Consumed with guilt and anguish he went and killed himself. Jesus asks: “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” (Matthew 16:26).
The corruption of the soul
Gehazi is another man from Scripture who exemplifies greed—and the consequences of greed (see 2 Kings 5:21-27). Greed didn’t cost him his life, but he suffered rather grievously because of it. Gehazi was the servant of Elisha, the prophet. He was a witness to all the great miracles that Elisha performed, including the miraculous cure of Naaman, who suffered from leprosy. When Gehazi sought to personally profit from the miracle—he lied to Naaman that Elisha wanted a reward for healing him—Gehazi became infected with the leprosy that Naaman had been cured of.
Greed makes our souls leprous and affects those around us. The self-centeredness of greed prevents us from sharing the blessings we have received with others, thus robbing the community of resources. It is avarice that accounts, in no small measure, for the huge disparity that exists between the rich and the poor in the world today.
A question that many people often have is how a loving and merciful God would allow such degrading poverty as one often sees in parts of Asia and Africa. The fault isn’t God’s. It is ours. There is enough wealth and food and resources to take care of every man, woman and child on this earth ten times over. Unfortunately, the sin of greed makes a few people hoard much of it for themselves, leaving the rest starving even for basic necessities.
But it isn’t only materially that people are affected. Even spiritually the world becomes poorer if those who obtain spiritual blessings aren’t prepared to share them with others. I remember a time in my life, very soon after my conversion, when God was teaching me a lot of things. He was giving me many valuable insights on life, love, and a whole lot of other subjects. Even as I was thinking about how best I could share these insights with others, I heard this voice in my head telling me that I didn’t need to do so because if I did, others would grow too and would possibly overtake me!
Fortunately, I didn’t listen, because not only would I have deprived them of shared blessings, I would have deprived myself of further blessings because the more we give, the more God gives us (cf. Luke 6:38).
Don’t we need security?
“But don’t we need money and the security that money brings?”, we may ask. Money is only good for what it buys us, and we don’t really need to buy more than what we need. Christians get—or should get—their security from God. Jesus brings this point across in another avarice-related parable that he told the people (see Luke 12:16-21).
A rich farmer once had a huge crop. Rather than be happy with the blessing he received, however, he began to worry about where he was going to store his crop. Finally, after having a good think about it, he decided he would tear down all his old barns and build new ones, and stock all his possessions in them. Then he would put his feet up and take it easy for the rest of his life. That night God appeared to him, saying: “You fool! You’re gonna die before the sun rises. Who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
There are parallels to this story in what’s happening in the world today. Many of us who put our faith in the things of the world have learned our lesson in times of recession. We believed we were ensuring the security of our future and the future of our families by putting our faith in our wealth, our stocks and bonds, and our investments. With many of us, all this “security” was wiped out overnight, leaving us bereft of anything. But those of us who put our trust in our Lord continue to remain secure that he who clothes the grass of the fields and feeds the ravens in the sky will clothe us and feed us too, in addition to taking care of our every other requirement. What we need to do is seek his kingdom and his righteousness and not the material things of this world.
