I. Introduction: Is Greed Really Good?

“Greed, for the the lack of a better word, is good.” So goes the pronouncement from Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas’ character in the 1987 film “Wall Street” It became a part of the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Gekko reflected a new kind of morality for the capitalist age. Seeking the good things in life wasn’t just permissible, it’s what lead to the greatest good. But does it?

The unfettered pursuit of greed has not delivered the promised blessings. This became apparent in 2008 when greed led to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression. This posture of greed isn’t just a problem of rapacious stock-brokers and investment bankers. It affects us all. People have more stuff (as demonstrated by a steady increase in the square footage of the average home, despite shrinking families) while they have fewer close friends. This has lead to what many in the mental health space have termed an epidemic of loneliness. All of this happens because we forget that man does not live by bread alone.

Jesus gives us a stark warning, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15, NIV). In other words, there’s more to life than just having lots of stuff.

II. When Self-Interest Becomes Greed

In telling us to avoid greed, is Jesus telling us that we must give up on looking out for ourselves? Not at all. Self interest is a natural part of being an individual. I’m more aware of my needs than others are (For example, only I know when I’m hungry). Self interest is a mechanism for making sure my basic needs (and the needs of my dependents) are met.

But we move from self-interest to Greed when my wants crowd out the legitimate needs of others, particularly of those in my immediate vicinity. It’s one thing to eat a lavish dinner, but to do so during a famine is something else. When we don’t recognize the needs of others, or don’t care enough about them to help when we are amply supplied, we devalue others We’re saying that our comfort is more important than the basic necessities of another. When we do this, we’ve crossed into a pattern of behaviour that makes it impossible to sustain a community. Let’s explore this using a parable Jesus tells us

III. The Rich Fool: Greed and the Breakdown of Community

Jesus was teaching in a crowd when someone calls out to him demanding that Jesus instruct his brother to divide an inheritance with him. Jesus refuses to get involved in the dispute. Assuming that the motivation of the one doing the asking is greed, he responds:

“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:16-21, NIV)

Some observations about this story that help illustrate the main point: In the ancient world, wealth wasn’t based, in capital, but in food.

While we live in an age of superabundant food, the reality of most people at most times in history is quite different Most families lived teetering on the edge of starvation. All the land suitable for agriculture was put to use growing food. They didn’t have modern inventions like pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and tractors that allow us to grow more food on less land with less labour. Sp there was no real prospect of increasing the size of the pie.

The character in the parable has been blessed by God with a bumper crop, so much that he doesn’t have room to store it. So what does he do? His first thought isn’t, “How can I share more?” but “How can I keep more?” He never considered that God may have given him the surplus to support others.

Since Jesus is a Jew, speaking to Jews, so we can assume that even though Jesus’ character is fictional, he would be assumed to be aware of the Jewish Law. Consider what Law says about the proper posture of the rich towards the poor:

If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need….Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, 10-11, NIV).

Rather than doing the bare minimum—giving the blessing he can’t even contain to the poor—the character sets out to keep more. Why? Because he doesn’t see or care about others: His self-focus is obvious by his language: It’s all “I/me/my,” never “we/us/our.” There is no one in this man’s world but himself.

As a boy, I remember having a fantasy about everyone disappearing, where I would be free to go to any stores and help myself to anything I wanted. Those fancy new running shoes? Check. The new game console with every available game? Check. Every tape from all the bands I like (this was before we even had a CD player)? Check. But if you spend much time thinking about it, this isn’t a good time, it’s a dystopian hellscape.

Setting aside the fact that the basic necessities of life (heat, electricity, food distribution) would stop immediately if everyone else were gone, even for an introverted boy like I was, it wouldn’t be long before I would be willing to trade all my new gadgets and toys for some company.

Humans need community. But Greed isolates us from community. The man in the story seeks security (by having enough food to stop worrying about food). But the cost is that it stops him from seeing others as people, robbing him of the ability to be part of a community.

People in our world face the same temptation: They build gated communities to keep others (and their needs) out of view, but they’re trading away their ability to be a part of the community for the convenience and luxury of separateness. While these things have a seductive appeal, in the end, it’s a bad trade. No wonder there is an epidemic of loneliness in our world today.

If you need to see the way greed breaks down community, you need look only at the tragic story of Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione. Brian Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurer in the US. Like any insurance company, they have an incentive to avoid paying out on as many claims as possible (by most accounts I’ve heard, United Healthcare was especially good at wiggling out of payments). This created, at the very least, a perception that UnitedHealthcare and its investors were greedily profiting off the misery of the sick and poor.

Because of this perception, vigilante Luigi Mangione [allegedly] shot and killed Johnson in New York last December. Despite the brutality of the crime and the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Mangione became a folk-hero to a lot of people, especially young adults. A few weeks after the killing, Generation Lab conducted a poll of college students and found that 48% felt that the killing was totally or somewhat justified.

Now, I want to be clear: Violence is never the answer. What Mangione [allegedly] did is a crime. It has undoubtedly caused great pain for Thompson’s loved ones and it doesn’t do anything to ease the pain of people whose lives and finances have been ruined by the practices of American health insurance companies. But the veneration of Mangione by so many people speaks to the fundamental breakdown in community that depersonalizing greed can cause. You can argue that Thompson has a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value by any legal means. This is a fancy way saying he has a legal obligation to be greedy on behalf of the people who own UnitedHealthcare stock. But this obligation just means that as a society, we’ve institutionalized greed. And the result has been the breaking of community: setting the investor class against those who don’t have the money to invest in companies like UnitedHealthcare. People who ought to live in a community of mutual love and care, are condoning murder because greed has broken the bonds that are meant to hold us together. If Greed breaks connection what can possibly rebuild it? Generosity.

IV. The Joy of Generosity: God’s Gift of Giving

While the Jewish faith emphasized mercy for the poor, In the pagan Greek culture of the first century, that kind of generosity wasn’t a cultural value. Well-to-do Greeks might give to others, but it was always done with an eye to some sort of pay off: Putting someone in their debt, or public honour.

The call of the Apostle Paul to ex-pagan Christians to be generous with the poor was deeply counter-cultural. Perhaps because of this, Paul organizes an offering from the churches in Greece to aid the poor in Judea. in 2 Corinthians, Paul discusses this gift, and sheds some light on what Christian generosity ought to look like:

And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people. And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us. So we urged Titus, just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving. 

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. 

And here is my judgment about what is best for you in this matter. Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. 

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little” (2 Corinthians 8:1-15, NIV).

The previous year, the Corinthians had been gung-ho about an offering destined for Jerusalem. But now, it seems the believers there need some encouragement to make good on the commitments they made. Paul holds up as an example the generosity of the churches in Macedonia (The Bereans, Philippians and Thessalonians). They were generous even when they couldn’t afford to be.

Does this mean we have an obligation to give until we can’t pay the bills? No, Paul is helping show that the Macedonian Christians have a very different attitude towards their possessions. He hasn’t browbeaten them into giving too much, they want to give generously because they see giving as a gift God has given them. They have the faith to trust that God will reward their generosity, so they give in confidence that God will sustain them.

To become like the Macedonians that Paul is praising, we need to learn to think differently about our possessions. People in our culture are taught to see the goods they control as theirs. When I get a paycheque, the money and all I buy with it are compensation for my time and they’re mine to do with as I please. This is a capitalist value, but not necessarily a biblical one.

The Bible doesn’t teach us that what we’ve earned is ours, but that all gifts ultimately come from God. The promised land, food and especially the salvation that allows us to live reconciled to God, aren’t things we’ve earned, but are God’s gracious gifts. Of course you’ve worked hard for your paycheque. But there are many people who have worked far harder for far less (like labourers in Sub-Saharan Africa). The fact that any of us can make a living from the work we do is itself a gift from God. So we shouldn’t consider ourselves to be the owners of what we have, but rather the stewards. An owner isn’t accountable for what they do with things they own. A steward is accountable to the real owner. In other words, what we have is Gods, so he should have a say in how we use it.

So how does God wish us to use his bounty? When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus says,

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV)

In other words, God’s expectations always come down to loving him, as expressed by loving others. Since we express our love to God, the giver of every good gift, by loving others, we properly use what he has given us in the service of others.

What we have—not just money but also time and skills—is entrusted to us to meet needs in this world—Our needs and the needs of others. God could simply supply everyone what they need, but by giving us goods to share, he builds of a community of love and interdependence.

In the case of the early church, generosity didn’t just help build solid congregations, it also helped build unity among two groups of people who would naturally find themselves at odds. Jews had a history of avoiding and judging Gentiles as godless pagans. Gentiles didn’t much appreciate what they perceived as Jewish condescension, responding with antisemitism. By organizing an offering from Gentiles Christians to support the poor among the Jewish Christians, Paul shows the power of generosity to build unity even between peoples with a history of bad blood between them. At a time when politics and culture threaten to tear the church apart, generosity gives us a way of stitching it back together. Generosity helps us understand, in very practical ways, that we really do need each other.

V. Cultivating Generosity: Practicing the Virtue that Frees Us

So we’ve established that Generosity is important, but unless we’re intentional about it, we’re naturally going to fall on the side of greed rather than generosity. So let’s discuss how we develop our generosity

A. Make Giving a Discipline

The first way we learn generosity, is by making giving into a routine. If we give when the mood strikes us, we’ll rarely do so, often when we’re emotionally manipulated to do so. But what if we treat giving not so much as a choice but a discipline? In the Old Testament, God mandated that the Israelites offer 10% of their income as a gift back to God. In the church, there’s a lot of debate about whether tithing is a New Testament thing, and, if so, whether it should be 10% of your gross or of your net. I’m of the opinion that the number is less important than the discipline.

Pick a number, a percentage, It should be enough that you notice it, and it should be automatic. It could be 10%, it could be more or it could be less. But whatever number you land on,  commit to yourself to give it first, not agreeing to give it if you happen to have something left over. The idea is that as we make generosity towards God an important value, we’ll find that God is likewise generous with us: As Paul tells the Corinthians:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:6-8, NIV).

The point isn’t that God owes us because we give, but that when we give, God gives back and we are knit together with him in love. And when we are generous with God, we can know that he will make sure we have the resources we need to carry out the mission he’s given us.

Let me acknowledge the elephant in the room: for a guy whose livelihood is tied up in people giving to the church, it’s self-serving to tell people that God wants them to give to the church. This is one of the reasons why every pastor I know hates to preach about giving. The truth is, our church can only do what it does when people generously support it. We don’t get any direct government support. Nor do we receive support from our denomination—In fact, its the other way around, its the giving of the churches that supports the denomination. So I want to thank people who make financial sacrifices so that we can continue to function.

But if a pastor telling you to be generous makes you cynical, here’s what I would propose: give somewhere else. Give to another church, give to a relief organization like Compassion or World Vision, give to support local charities like the Salvation Army Food Bank, or give to the hospital. The important thing is that giving tunes you in to the needs of others around you, And that it reminds you that the meaning of life isn’t found in the stuff that money buys. 

Remember giving is the antidote to the power of Greed in your life. Regular giving is like regular exercise: it creates a baseline level of spiritual fitness.

B. Keep Your Eyes Open for Needs Around You

Regular giving is important, but the point isn’t that once I’ve given my 10% or whatever, that the rest is mine to do with as I please Remember, giving binds us together with others. So to cultivate generosity, we should keep our eyes and ears open to perceive need around us. In the early church, there was a mix of poor and wealthy believers. We’re told that some of richer Christians sold land they owned to support those who didn’t have wealth. This wasn’t them offering a tithe, this was them going over-and-above, responding to the needs of the people around them.

God may have blessed me with just what you need, or vice versa. When I become aware of your legitimate need, and I’m able to help you with it, then I should consider if God inviting me to share with you. I don’t believe God twists our arm to give like this, but he invites us to give to each other because generosity teaches us to love and belong together.

There are even times when our giving may be inappropriate. Like when I know that someone wants to use the gift to do something harmful, or when I realize I’m giving to manipulate others

C. Listen to the Spirit’s Leading

We should practice regular giving and also give when we see needs, but There are times when we feel led by the Spirit to give, even if we’re not specifically aware of the need we’re addressing. So we should pay attention to the Spirit’s direction. Because when we give to another in need when that person hasn’t articulated the need, we help them understand the truth that even when gifts come through others, they come from God. George Müller’s story illustrates this well. Müller, a 19th Century German missionary in England, set up an orphanage that housed and educated thousands of children who would otherwise work in terrible conditions in poor houses.

Müller felt God wanted him to run the orphanages without asking directly for money. He never had to. There were many stories about unexpected donations given exactly when they were needed. As a result, Müller’s could see, in the generosity of those who gave, the providence of his heavenly Father sustaining him. Giving in response to the Spirit’s prompting, might remind someone else that God moved you to give, and so God is to be thanked for what you generously provided them.

VI. Conclusion: The God who Gave Everything

In summery, Greed calls out to us, tempting us to consider our own wants, but not others’ needs. This kind of blind self-interest isolates us and leaves our with lives that can feel meaningless. But Generosity shows us the way of love. Generosity isn’t just something God requires, it’s also something he does: “For God so loved the world that he gave.” (Jn.3:16). “Jesus though rich, became poor for our sake “(2 Co.8:9) A generous God created people to live generously in this world. He invites us to live according to that plan. Remember that Greed isolates while generosity connects. Greed says ‘mine’ while generosity says ‘ours.’ Greed stores up treasures for ourselves on earth while generosity lays them them up in heaven. Generosity is God’s love becoming visible through us.