“Greed is the root of all evil.” Yes, I know we have heard that the “love of money” should start the sentence but the translators could have easily replace the phrase with the word greed. Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods and it also known as known as avarice or covetousness. The last three of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 dealt with greed:
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s."
The title of the blog is a quote from the new movie WALL STREET: Money Never Sleeps and features a man named Gordon Gekko who epitomizes the Wall Street mentality. In the original 1987 movie, Gekko proclaims “greed is good”. In this sequel, he now adds “greed is legal”.
Greed is what put the U.S. in its current economic recession (or depression if you are without a job). The Wall Street banksters managed to lobby Congress and get the laws changed, repealed, or watered down to the point where greed could take over in reckless abandon. We may find that there has never been a point in this nation’s history where the greed of a few has had such a disastrous impact on so many. Greed found a way to exploit the covetousness of the average person wanting a bigger, nicer house, car, or trappings. This greed got kicked off in the early 80’s with changes in the law over the next 20 years. This greed is found throughout Scripture. The greed of inheritance surfaces when Judah wanted to remove Joseph from the scene in Genesis 37. Judah was in line to receive the cherished inheritance from Jacob but Joseph’s dream indicated otherwise. Judah needed to insure that Joseph’s dream would not come to pass. His spirit of greed rose up and took action. Nobody was going to take his inheritance away. He did not trust in the Word of the LORD so he felt he must take immediate and decisive action. Get rid of the kid! Is today any different? How many first or second hand stories do each of us know of where the inheritors ravage through the house and belongings of the parent who has died? Inheritance can bring out the root of all evil. On the other hand, Love exposes this evil and can pluck it out by its root.
“Legal” greed is going to take down the economy of this country unless it plucked up by the root. Passing new laws to confiscate personal wealth is a form of greed by lawmakers to perpetuate their paradigm of power. Lowering interest rates to transfer wealth from the savers to the banks is another form of greed. The banks lost money in their greedy quest for bonuses and now the hard earned money of the savers of this country will re-liquefy the very banks that need to be shut down. As fruit inspectors we must conclude that greed is indeed legal.