"Greed: Capitalism’s Driver? Deadliest of Sins? Human Nature? "

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
Decembr 13, 2009

Reading: Hindu story
There was a man who wandered through-out the world seeking his deepest desire.  He wandered from one city to another, from one realm to another looking for fulfillment and happiness, but in all his wanderings never came to it.  Finally one day, tired from his search, he sat down underneath a great tree at the foot of a mountain.  What he did not know is that this was The Great Wish Fulfilling Tree.  Whatever one wishes for when seated underneath it immediately becomes true.

As he rested in his weariness he thought to himself, “What a beautiful spot this is. I wish I had a home here,” and instantly before his eyes a lovely home appeared. Surprised and delighted he thought further, “Ah, if only I had a partner to be here with me, then my happiness would be complete,” and in a moment a beautiful woman appeared calling him “husband” and beckoning to him. “Well, first, I am hungry,” he thought.  “I wish there was food to eat.”  Immediately a banquet table appeared covered with every wonderful kind of food and drink, main courses, pastries, sweets of every variety. The man sat down and began to feast himself hungrily, but partway through the meal, still feeling tired he thought, “I wish I had a servant to serve me the rest of this food,” and sure enough a manservant appeared.

Finishing the meal the man sat back down to lean against this wonderful tree and began to reflect, “How amazing it is that everything I wish has come true.  There is some mysterious force about this tree. I wonder if there is a demon who lives in it,” and sure enough no sooner had he thought this than a great demon appeared.  “Oh, my,” he thought,  “this demon will probably eat me up,” and that is just what it did.

Sermon:  Greed: Capitalism’s Driver? Deadliest of Sins? Human Nature?    Rev. Bruce Russell-JayneThis morning’s sermon is the first in a series I plan to do on the classical “Seven Deadly Sins” and their corresponding “Seven Heavenly Virtues.”  The notion that certain types of wrongdoing are at the root of our vices has been with us for at least a couple of millennia, and the idea won’t go away, so I figured I ought to try to interpret them for our little band of religious liberals.  I chose to do Greed in December because the controversy over the “True Meaning of Christmas” always surfaces this time of year with its attendant ridicule of over- the-top gift buying and the claim that Greed is behind it all.  Like Dr. Ysaye Barnwell, the soloist in the song we just heard, she is a UU by the way, I struggled to know how to approach Greed.   Then, of course, I thought about the Grinch.  How The Grinch Stole Christmas is a classic tale about greed, materialism, and kindness all wrapped up in one package! We all know the Dr. Seuss story, first published in 1957 – some of us by heart.

The Grinch, whose heart is “two sizes too small,” hates the Whos down in Whoville because of all their Christmas celebrations, and he plans to descend on the town and, by means of burglary, deprive them of their Christmas presents and decorations and thus “prevent Christmas from coming.”  The tension builds as the narrator asks, “You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch, but are you rotten enough to ruin Whoville’s Christmas Whobilation, even after Cindy Lou Who nominated you to be the Cheermeister of the event?”  Well, yes, we find out, he is.  To his amazement, despite his stealing the Christmas presents and decorations from the Whos, Christmas comes anyway.   The plot turns on this verse, “He puzzled and puzzled ‘til his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. ‘Maybe Christmas..’ he thought  ‘Doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”  Then his heart grows three sizes larger, he returns all the presents and trimmings, and is warmly welcomed into the community of the Whos.

The story, of a pessimist who learns to love Christmas and “Who-manity,” is similar to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge sees the pain his greed causes and learns compassion.  The Grinch’s change of heart is the consequence of the intrepid happiness of the Whos in spite of their losses, and the kindness they are willing to show him, inviting him into their community in spite of his resentful personality.  These are good messages for children, and all of us really.  Maybe they are the true meaning of Christmas.

These stories are modern interpretations of a very traditional approach to dealing with Sin – which is, to learn and practice virtues to work against sin.  Thus Christian theologians created the Seven Heavenly Virtues to counteract the Seven Deadly Sins.  They classified them as: the cardinal: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude, and the theological: Faith, Hope, and Charity.   The battle between Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues epitomizes the dualistic concept in which we must be saved from our evil selves by a perfectly virtuous holy spirit whose messages to practice virtue guide us in the lifelong battle with our inner demons which naturally want to sin.  However, liberal religion long ago rejected the concept that human beings, depraved from birth, must fight a holy war against sin.  “So, why should we religious liberals talk about sin at all?” you ask.  Well, because Greed doesn’t go away.  This time last year, a lot of people were indignantly screaming that Greed was the source of the Wall Street Meltdown.  So, whatever we call it, let’s dig a little deeper into Greed.

Over the centuries, Greed has been identified by various aliases from “acquisitiveness” to “covetousness,” “cupidity,” and “avarice,” and on to some of its more particular synonyms like “miserliness,” or, “simony.”  Whatever form it takes, we have to acknowledge Greed’s presence in all of our lives.  Indeed, of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed is the most common.  It can be construed to be at the root of several of the 10 Commandments. Of the Deadly Sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger and Sloth, Greed is often named as the mother of the rest. This is due in large part to the dictum of St. Paul, the first Christian, when he wrote to the early church, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  He likely based his pronouncement on the many treatments of the problem of wealth in the Christian Scriptures which caution those who would follow Jesus to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor.  In so doing they might secure themselves a place in the Kingdom of God.

For most people, giving away all their possessions is an impossibility, unless they become monks or nuns, intentionally living in poverty.  Thus, “the Christian believer…is always aware of being, thanks to Greed, just a little bit less than truly Christian in the fullest.”  The Christian who chooses a vocation which requires her to work and earn money also chooses to live in at least a little bit of sin.  Christianity sees sin as inevitable, that people are sinful by nature.  In all the world’s religions, No other religion has been so completely fascinated with sin as Christianity.  It is pre-occupied with sin as a structural element of our being from whose dominion we must be released.  Christians find salvation from this inner conflict in a conscious dependency on grace, that is, through Jesus’ promise to forgive sinners.  And in our Christianized society, most of us seem pretty conflicted about greed.

Many folks who don’t buy into the traditional concept of sin have found solace in Eastern religions which are less interested in sin and more interested in developing virtues such as humility, simplicity and genuineness.  The Buddha taught that craving things to be different than they are is the cause of our suffering, and that we can be released from our torment through the suppression of desire.   Buddhism gives the 8-fold path to right living, which lists virtues to pursue and sees greed, hatred and delusion as mental impediments to ending suffering rather than stand-alone powers.  Eastern religions see Greed and her cohorts not as sins but as vices; that is, acts over which we have some control and which do not have to be.

During the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the traditional understandings of sin changed.  Trying to salvage the belief in a benevolent God given the corrupted state of creation, scholars attempted to separate the origins of evil as far as possible from biblical tales.  By the end of the 19th century, individual human psychology, not theological reflection, seemed the proper place to search for and resolve the problem of evil.  With this “secularization of evil,” liberal religion decided to quit talking about it - thinking the science of psychology would surely solve the problem.  However, centering the origin of evil in the individual person’s psychological processes has not ended greed.  Psychologists are the first to tell us that we have little control over anyone but ourselves.  We may learn to control our own vices and see ourselves as righteous, but still have little confidence in the benevolence of the rest of the world.  Seeing others cheat or “game the system” feeds the “popular sense of Greed as someone else’s sin, and/or as the sin of the oppressor.” Thinking we can’t change a corrupt government or economic system can make us cynical or depressed.  Believing we as individuals, can’t fix the society we live in can have the effect of turning us into victims just as surely as believing people will inevitably sin because of human nature.

After the fall of Lehman Brothers and the bailout of the other mega-banks, we focus our anger aver this recession on the super-rich CEOs of Wall Street.  Now that no one can get a loan, certainly we feel our disenfranchisement from the economic system was caused by the sins of the high rolling speculators.  But what about our collusion in the whole affair?  Certainly in the last two decades, we who invested our retirement savings in the market did not raise the alarm, we were enjoying the ride too much, right up until it crashed.  Before then, we didn’t hold Bernie Madoff, Alan Greenspan, or even Tiger Woods for that matter accountable for their greed because in the back of our minds we held open the possibility that some day we too might be rich.  We ordinary citizens were too busy “counting our phantom money” to worry about the have-nots or the soundness of the system.  You see, it doesn’t require having great wealth to be greedy.

In the Hindu story we just heard, at first the poor man seems to be so innocent; he is simply yearning for something to slake his thirst.  Even his wanting a place to live and desiring a companion with whom to go through life are just natural human yearnings, desires we can all identify with.  But the story also contains a warning: unchecked craving will do you in.  But in this story, the man doesn’t really seem to me to be intentionally greedy, in the sense that he wanted more than he needed or was being selfish or hurting other people.  This is a cautionary tale for those who might not be aware of the dangers of simply indulging in our natural cravings.

Whether we think of Greed as a sin or simply an annoying component of our interior lives, we must acknowledge its universal presence in human beings.  Without Greed, we would probably never gorge ourselves at Thanksgiving, become alcoholics, or buy just one more collectable to sit on a shelf.  Nor, for that matter would we cheat or steal.  On the other hand, we would also probably never eat, or procreate, or build, or aspire to greatness.  In short, without Greed, we would not be human.   Until recently this inescapable companion of our personal thoughts was categorically defined as evil and destructive, but this is no longer the case.  This inner companion of ours can prod us into well-being as well as destructiveness; it can spark our creativity as well as our desire for more stuff.   

A person's efforts to look after their own well-being, to cultivate the self and achieve goals for the good of the self has been termed “Rational Selfishness.” The idiom, “Charity begins at home,” springs from this idea, and there’s nothing wrong with it if we remember it does not end there.  In economics, it is a given that one of the necessary components of an efficient marketplace is lots of people pursuing their own self-interests.  We can certainly see how prudence in our buying habits is necessary for our family’s survival in tough times like these.  The economic theory which says we should only pursue our individual self-interest says coincidentally that’s the best thing for all of us.  Adam Smith said “By pursuing his own interest [a person] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”  This is called the “Invisible Hand” theory, which says that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole.

Whether you are ideologically a capitalist with an MBA and totally believe in laissez-faire when it comes to business, or you are a socialist with a beret who believes each should produce according to their capability and receive according to their needs, our society currently requires all of us to participate in the self-interested marketplace and to look out for ourselves first.  Therefore, pragmatically speaking, because we have to acquire what we need through our capitalist system  we are constantly tempted to want more than we need.  If greed is unchecked by a sense of satisfaction - call it gratitude or temperance if you want - buying what we need can almost imperceptibly turn into an unending quest for more, more, more.  That’s the quandary, the difficulty in knowing when we have enough, “When does simple need turn into greed?” is at the heart of Greed’s power over us.  And Greed likes us to be confused. 

If we no longer want to call them the Seven Deadly Sins, how shall we define Greed and her brood?  How shall we change “Rational selfishness” into something that will really work for everyone, not just the ones talented or lucky enough to play the game well?  We need to swing the pendulum back toward the middle of the arc running from individualism to communalism. I like the philosophy call “Enlightened Self-Interest” which turns Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand of Capitalism on its ear.  How’s that for a mixed metaphor?  Enlightened Self-Interest is the basis for an ethics in which people acting to further the interests of others ultimately serve their own self-interest.  A simple way to express the idea is, “An individual, group, or even a commercial entity will “do well by doing good.’” There is a similar philosophy behind our creation of a Covenant of Beloved Community. 

You may call me naïve, but working together for the common good is what I have decided to spend my time on.  With confidence in the titans of our capitalist institutions at an all time low, we may not have a better opportunity in our lifetimes to get rid of some of the greed from the system.  My hope for us is our children will not remember us for the mortgage bubble and the recession that followed it, but for the universal health care and other community strengthening reforms we initiated in their wake.  Things like Fair Trade Coffee, 10 Thousand Villages, Micro-loans to women entrepreneurs and the Heifer Project make me hopeful that this will can happen.  Let us make it so.