Greed and why we have ten commandments, not nine

There’s a telling cartoon that has been circulating on social networking sites in recent days, depicting a stall selling T-shirts bearing the message “Capitalism is Dead”. The trader is promoting a “Buy two, get one free” offer, and is announcing to his wife that he’s just received an order for 3 million of them.

It reminded me that whilst there is undoubtedly a valid issue of justice that lies behind the protests being staged outside St Paul’s Cathedral and elsewhere, it’s not just bankers’ unwarranted bonuses or even MPs fiddling their expenses that are the root cause of our moral and financial woes. It’s a problem of greed that affects me, and I daresay you, and indeed is a universal flaw in our fallen spiritual DNA. If it were not, God could have given us nine commandments, and omitted the tenth.

Yet our instinctive tendency in today’s blame culture is to absolve ourselves by collectively pointing accusing fingers at the easiest or most obvious candidates to scapegoat. Blame can be born out of anger or a sense of injustice, but those sentiments can easily blind us to the log in our own eye.

Much of the accusatory rhetoric being levelled at bankers, stockbrokers and politicians bears a striking resemblance to what Bernard Woolley, of “Yes, Prime Minister” fame, referred to as “irregular verbs”. His memorable examples included, “I have an independent mind; you are eccentric; he is round the twist”. And a second apparently timeless example: “I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he’s been charged under Section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.” In today’s era of financial meltdowns and eye-watering national debts, we could perhaps cite a third example as, “I am prudently upholding my standard of living; you are an ambitious yuppie; he is an unprincipled money-grabbing fat-cat.”

Such mental stereotyping allows us to think of ourselves as being well-balanced and shrewd, our friends and colleagues as misguided or weak-willed, and ultimately permits us to be contemptuously dismissive of others whose financial bonuses or profit margins seem to be indefensibly obscene. But whatever profession we are in, and wherever we find ourselves on the social ladder, our own human nature is never exempt from the insidious temptation of greed. It’s not something that we readily wish to recognise, but the continuing national addiction to the lottery is a fair indication that a huge portion of our population would rather like to get rich, notwithstanding it being at others’ expense. The multi-millionaire John D Rockefeller was once asked, “How much money does it take to make a person happy?” His answer was “Just a little bit more than they have”.

The well-known comedy film Rat Race, starring John Cleese, is an insightful commentary on the motivation of greed. A group of casino losers are brought together to chase after a $2 million dollar prize. Each contestant is given the key to a locker containing the fortune in Silver City, New Mexico. The race has only one rule – get there first. The film supposedly poses the question “what lengths would people go to when the restraints are off in order to win $2 million?” Although the scenarios in the film are utterly comical, the characters resort to lying, stealing, cheating, causing damage and destruction and endangering life in the bid to win. The promise of an enormous payoff gives them the excuse to behave in whatever way they choose.

Whilst similar recent profligate examples in the corporate sector have generated useful analyses of greed from the sociological and economic standpoints, it can only be properly understood from a theological perspective. Without the biblical insight on greed, our understanding will be at best, superficial – not least because greed, according to the Bible, is just another form of idolatry (Colossians 3:5). Little wonder, therefore, that hardly anyone owns up to being a worshipper. But idols are simply things in which we place our security, trust and reliance.

In Philippians 4, the Apostle Paul speaks of how, in Christ, he has “learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty”. In either situation, he was content. The secret of which Paul speaks is one that Christians in this country are going to need more and more in the coming months. As Britain tightens its belt and becomes unavoidably poorer, the likelihood of social discontent will sharply increase. But what a testimony it would be if, during these lean years, Christians were able to genuinely say as St Paul did, “I’ve learned the secret…whether in plenty or in want…of being content”.



Tony Ward is a Bible teacher and evangelist who was ordained in Zimbabwe. He currently lives and ministers in Bristol.