{"id":1987,"date":"2013-03-17T13:45:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=1987"},"modified":"2013-03-17T13:45:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:45:19","slug":"march-17-2013-whats-on-your-mind-how-much-greed-is-too-much-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2013\/03\/17\/march-17-2013-whats-on-your-mind-how-much-greed-is-too-much-greed\/","title":{"rendered":"March 17, 2013, "What's on YOUR Mind? How Much Greed is Too Much Greed?""},"content":{"rendered":"

Message 125, \u201cWhat\u2019s on YOUR Mind? \u00a0How Much Greed is Too Much Greed?\u201d, 3-17-13\"greed1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

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To listen to the message, download it here:<\/p>\n\n

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When we considered the topic of immigration last Sunday, we acknowledged that it is also a political issue on which there are many opposing opinions.\u00a0 And today\u2019s topic is no different.\u00a0 As I said last week, our politics are informed by our spiritual views.\u00a0 How we answer the big spiritual questions in life often determine our political views – why are we here and what purpose do we serve?\u00a0 It is difficult to separate spirituality from politics.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is essential that we make that effort.\u00a0 Jesus himself implored his followers to distinguish between views on civil government versus views on spiritual matters.\u00a0 \u201cRender unto Caesar what is Caesar\u2019s, and unto God what is God\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so I encourage each of us today to examine the topic of greed only from a spiritual perspective.\u00a0 If you will, for our time here today, take off your political hat and put on your spiritual beanie or your Papal pointy hat if you prefer!<\/p>\n

At their core, I believe most people have sincere intentions towards fellow humans.\u00a0 Only the most pathological enjoy the suffering of others.\u00a0\u00a0 We are each empathetic people who hurt and suffer when others hurt and suffer.\u00a0 And, we celebrate when others experience happiness and joy.\u00a0 Spiritually, each person yearns for a better earth and a better existence, no matter their religion, nationality or political views.\u00a0 Let us approach the topic of greed, therefore, from such common ground.<\/p>\n

As disturbing as the video on wealth distribution in America is, it\u2019s important to recognize that it only measures wealth in this nation.\u00a0 Indeed, even the poorest citizens in the U.S. rank above the poor in many nations.\u00a0 Using an international measurement of purchasing power, the global middle class is defined as having a purchasing power income of between $2.00 and $50.00 per day.\u00a0 While that is a relatively big difference, it simply means that anyone who earns less than $2.00 a day in purchasing power is, by global standards, poor and one who earns more than $50.00 a day is wealthy – again by global and not American standards.\u00a0 Using that same index, the average middle class family in the U.S. makes approximately $60.00 per day in global purchasing power.\u00a0 Thus, an average American is substantially above the global standard of middle class.<\/p>\n

What this means is that as quick as any of us are to condemn the 1% in our nation who now have amassed a huge excess of wealth, by the standard of people around the world, a majority of Americans are considered wealthy.\u00a0 Many of us would likely fit that international category even though in the U.S. we are likely middle class.<\/p>\n

What we must guard against, therefore, is a desire to throw stones at others.\u00a0 It is far more difficult and painful to shine the spotlight on ourselves and thereby question our own values.\u00a0 Each of us already has a higher income, more personal wealth and owns more luxuries than the poorest of the world\u2019s poor, those who survive on less than $1.00 per day, can ever<\/span><\/i><\/b> hope to achieve.\u00a0 For the millions who may not own even one pair of shoes, to the millions who literally live in shacks built of scraps, to the millions who daily scavenge for food out of dumps, we are supremely wealthy.\u00a0 We are the global face of excess and greed.<\/p>\n

As quick as I am to condemn greed in the 1%, therefore, I must honestly examine my own heart and my own motivations to root out that attitude in me.\u00a0 I must ask myself if I am no better than a Wall Street hedge fund trader who greedily seeks ever larger sums of wealth – even as I think in terms of thousands of dollars while they think in terms of millions or even billions.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I must confront the question which I used as the title for today\u2019s message.\u00a0 How much greed is too much greed – especially when it comes to myself?\u00a0 Where is the line drawn between a person who works for a living and seeks the average pleasures of life versus one who lusts for more material things and amasses immense sums of wealth?\u00a0 What is a spiritual understanding of sufficiency and its negative opposite – greed?\u00a0 If our effort in here is not to cast stones as much as it is to spiritually examine our hearts and seek inner change so that we can in turn improve the world, what can we do in our<\/span><\/i><\/b> lives and in our<\/span><\/i><\/b> communities to prevent uncontrolled greed?\u00a0 As Gandhi said, and as I often quote, \u201cWE<\/span><\/i> must be the change we want to see.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

As a spiritual text, the Bible addresses the topic of money and wealth far more than almost any other topic.\u00a0 Indeed, it was a primary focus of Jesus.\u00a0 And, typically, he sought not to judge but to teach.\u00a0 As any good teacher, he rarely told others HOW to act or HOW to think.\u00a0 Instead, he asked questions, told stories and used them to encourage self-examination.\u00a0 He wanted people to look at their motivations – and then change their thinking by themselves.\u00a0 As we all know, change must come from within.\u00a0 Jesus simply asked the right questions and acted as a catalyst for inner spiritual change.<\/p>\n

In one incident, when Jesus was surrounded by a large crowd of admirers, a man yelled out from the crowd and asked that Jesus tell the man\u2019s brother to stop refusing to divide the family inheritance with him.\u00a0 Jesus replied in his classic way.\u00a0 He first shot down the idea that he was to be a judge.\u00a0 He asked, \u201cWho made me an umpire between you?\u201d\u00a0 <\/b>But he then quickly added, \u201cWatch out!<\/b>\u00a0 Be on your guard against wanting to have more and more things. Life is not made up of how much a person has.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

And then Jesus told a parable of a farmer who was bragging about how his land was so productive.\u00a0 He was reaping far more grain than he had room to store.\u00a0 His barns were completely full and yet his land produced more and more.\u00a0 And so the farmer thought to himself that he would tear down his existing barns and build much bigger ones so he could store the greater and greater excess of his grain wealth.\u00a0 The farmer even assured himself that he will have so much stored away that he can stop working, take it easy and eat, drink and have fun.\u00a0 But God literally has the last word in the parable.\u00a0 The farmer dies that night and the abundance of his wealth is soon owned by someone else.\u00a0 Indeed, God calls the farmer a \u201cfool\u201d for his greedy thinking.<\/p>\n

The lesson of Jesus\u2019s teaching to the brothers in the crowd clearly expresses his views about greed.\u00a0 He suggested that BOTH brothers were greedy – the one who wanted more wealth by demanding his fair share AND the brother who wanted it all.\u00a0 Jesus got at the motivational heart in both brothers – each was greedy.\u00a0 Each saw wealth as a source of happiness and well-being.\u00a0 Life is not about how much money and things we have, Jesus said.\u00a0 It\u2019s about much, much bigger concerns.<\/p>\n

And then he used his parable to show how foolish greed can be.\u00a0 The farmer arrogantly stores up far more wealth than he needs – his barns were already bursting at the seams – and then he dies.\u00a0 The implied point Jesus made to his listeners and to us is – how much do we really need?\u00a0 How many cars, how many pairs of clothes, how many shoes, how many vacations, how much of ANYTHING do we really need?\u00a0 From both a spiritual AND a practical perspective, the parable tells us that greed is foolish since nobody can ever use up huge sums of wealth and it won\u2019t be ours forever anyway.<\/p>\n

Just as important, however, we find in Jesus\u2019 response an answer to my earlier question, how much is too much?\u00a0 He spoke not against the fact that the brothers had an inheritance but against their greedy attitudes.\u00a0 And the farmer in Jesus\u2019 parable had the same motivations.\u00a0 Instead of giving away some of his excess wealth, he figured out a way to hoard it.\u00a0 The farmer was not called foolish for being productive and for storing up some<\/i> grain.\u00a0 He was called foolish for storing more than what he prudently needed.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Jesus did not condemn wealth.\u00a0 He clearly did not condemn hard work and saving for one\u2019s needs.\u00a0 And the rest of the Bible is quite consistent on this point.\u00a0 People who are wise, work hard and save up enough for difficult times are praised.\u00a0 Paul, in one of his letters, sums up the Biblical view.\u00a0 \u201cThose who desire<\/span><\/i> to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires…\u201d, <\/b>he wrote.\u00a0 \u201cFor the love<\/span><\/i> of money is the root of all kinds of evils.\u00a0 It is through this<\/span><\/i> craving that some have wandered away from what they know to be good.\u201d\u00a0 <\/b>The clear lesson is that money and wealth are NOT bad.\u00a0 It is the LOVE of money – by the 1%, by the very poor, or by any of us – THAT is what must be avoided.<\/p>\n

And almost all world religions agree.\u00a0 Bhishma, one of the great Hindu yogis, once said, \u201c<\/b>Covetousness alone is a great destroyer of merit and goodness.\u00a0 From such coveting proceeds sin.\u00a0 This type of desire is the spring of all the hypocrisy in the world.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

The Buddha said that greed is a desire for an excess of material things and pleasures.\u00a0 Such desire is the source of human suffering. Greed, he said, is about never being satisfied with what one has and always wanting and expecting more.<\/p>\n

David Loy, who is a foremost contemporary Buddhist thinker, says that, like Jesus, Buddha did not condemn money.\u00a0 Rather, the Buddha encouraged a middle way to both acknowledge the necessity of money AND<\/span><\/b> for us to avoid excessive attachment to material things and wealth.\u00a0 The desire for money must not control us.\u00a0 We must control the desire.\u00a0 Do our material possessions define who we are?\u00a0 Does the pursuit of money dominate our attitudes and our thinking?\u00a0 Or, are we defined by more important qualities – by our compassion, empathy, generosity, and forgiveness?<\/p>\n

The warnings that Jesus and Buddha offered must speak to us and all others.\u00a0 With the accumulation of any amount of wealth – from a few hundred dollars to billions of dollars – we must be on guard not to fall in love with it.\u00a0 Wealth must not be our source of security and material things must not be our source of happiness.<\/p>\n

That is the spiritual warning each of us can take to heart.\u00a0 The love of money often brings about a downfall.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen countless examples of excess greed and how it brings down men and women – from Bernie Madoff to hedge fund speculators who helped cause the recent financial collapse to home buyers a few years ago who purchased houses far larger and far costlier than they needed or could afford.<\/p>\n

This attitude of a love of money and wealth, however, is apparent in our nation today.\u00a0 It is the implicit warning of the video we just saw.\u00a0\u00a0 The concentration of wealth far beyond what is prudent or necessary is a real and present danger.\u00a0 Excessively high salaries and high concentrations of wealth are destructive to the soul and threaten our well-being as a nation.\u00a0 The pursuit of money, instead of the pursuit of love, decency, respect and generosity is dangerous. \u00a0Money and wealth in our nation are not bad.\u00a0 Indeed, we need it to create jobs, innovate and solve many of our problems.\u00a0 It is the attitude about wealth that is a dire threat.<\/p>\n

As a people and as a nation, we must not encourage the love of money in ourselves or in others.\u00a0 It is not acceptable in a homeless person or in a corporate CEO.\u00a0 Such greed, as Jesus pointed out, leads to foolish actions and a mindset that is contrary to the higher ethics we value.\u00a0 Just as greed encourages hoarding and arrogance in the super wealthy, it also encourages envy and jealousy in the poor and middle class.\u00a0 And those attitudes often lead to outright rebellion and even revolution.\u00a0 The concentration of excess wealth in our nation puts at risk the very foundations of our society – democracy and capitalism.\u00a0 Given enough time without reform, people will rebel and push our nation in extreme directions.\u00a0 Overly greedy capitalists will sow the seeds of their own destruction and perhaps that of capitalism itself.\u00a0 To save our nation, its capitalist economy and to save our souls, we must root out greed in ourselves and in our culture.<\/p>\n

And that, like what Jesus and Buddha taught, leads us to morally imaginative solutions.\u00a0 Dating from the 1930\u2019s, an innovative theory has been developed that helps to define much of human behavior.\u00a0 Called game-theory, it was made famous by John Forbes Nash, the subject of the film \u201cA Beautiful Mind\u201d.\u00a0 Creating complex algorithms and mathematical models, Nash and others have shown that humans make decisions in life based on how they perceive others will also act and react.\u00a0 Such decisions are often competitive and guided by self-interest.\u00a0 What do I need to do to get a job over someone else?\u00a0 What do I need to do to acquire more food or a healthier mate over someone else?\u00a0 While human nature is competitive, and often greedy, Nash and others propose that over time, humans learn a better way.\u00a0 They find that brute competition is a lose-lose situation.\u00a0 Nobody wins.\u00a0 As humans learn this fact, they find that cooperation with others is an ironic form of self-interest.\u00a0 I will do better if I cooperate with others.\u00a0 I will do better if others do better too.<\/p>\n

And this attitude is not just unique to humans.\u00a0 It is shown in animals with herd instincts and mobbing behavior.\u00a0 One wolf, for example, usually cannot catch and take down large prey by itself.\u00a0 It quickly learns that through cooperation and work with others, prey can be taken down together.\u00a0 Not only will the one wolf eat, so too will the entire wolf pack.\u00a0 This is not survival of the fittest as much as it is survival of the cooperative.<\/p>\n

And human history is no different.\u00a0 Society has moved to ever increasing and more complex levels of human cooperation – from lone hunter, to tribe, to village, to city, to nation and, now, to globalization.\u00a0 Each individual retains basic rights but each also understands that cooperation and not competition is the long term answer to individual and cultural success.<\/p>\n

Nash called this realization by humans and animals equilibrium or symbiosis economics.\u00a0 We depend on one another to do well in life.\u00a0 No longer is it a matter of competing for finite resources as it is a morally imaginative approach to economic thinking.\u00a0 It is not socialist redistribution of wealth but a recognition that the well-being of the whole requires the well-being of each person.\u00a0 If I help you succeed, I too will succeed.\u00a0 Capitalism will survive and thrive only if it works to assure that most people share in its opportunities and benefits.\u00a0 Capitalism will fail if excess greed is allowed to dominate.<\/p>\n

Nash proposed that equilibrium will result one way or another.\u00a0 Either humans recognize and choose it peacefully or they choose it by force.\u00a0 And the history of revolutions supports this fact.\u00a0 Equilibrium is therefore not only a matter of choice, it is according to Nash a mathematical and empirical certainty.\u00a0 It happens when humans understand cooperation works better.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, what we realize is what Jesus, Buddha and other prophets taught.\u00a0 We might be born with the original sin of greed, but we soon learn the error of such ways.\u00a0 We each need money to buy things we need. But the love of money and things is not the stuff of a meaningful life.\u00a0 It is not the stuff of a lasting legacy for any person.\u00a0 If we are all empathetic people, we ought to want everyone to succeed and enjoy the average needs of life.<\/p>\n

And so we cannot change our nation or our world unless we begin to change ourselves.\u00a0 I know I am a terrible sinner when it comes to greed.\u00a0 I admit to dreams of winning the lottery, to wanting luxuries in my life and to desiring longer and more exotic vacations.\u00a0 I can put my lust for money and things over my concern for others.<\/p>\n

But, greed is not good.\u00a0 It is bad.\u00a0 Even though we see it all around us, we can recognize it as a moral and spiritual danger to our souls and to our nation.\u00a0 We must find more and more ways to cooperate with others.\u00a0 That involves not charitable or government hand outs to others but offering helping hands up through better education, healthcare and job training.\u00a0 Most of all, we can stop pointing fingers at others and instead work to change our OWN attitudes and thereby help build what we all desire – a world where every person lives at peace with his or her needs \u2013 and refuses the impulse to love money and things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Message 125, \u201cWhat\u2019s on YOUR Mind? \u00a0How Much Greed is Too Much Greed?\u201d, 3-17-13 (c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved   To listen to the message, download it here:   When we considered the topic of immigration last Sunday, we acknowledged that it is also a political issue on which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}