Greed, Materialsim... and Yet We Don't Ask.

James 4:2
You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

James was my devotional reading for the last couple of weeks. I kinda figured I’d be through it in a couple of days but the Lord thought otherwise. I found myself reading with greater depth, and going back through verse after verse for more of what God was trying to say to me.

One of the biggest struggles I see in the church today is materialism. Not just the individual, but for the churches themselves too. On the side of the church, greed for ‘stuff’ is taking hold in the way we evangelize. So much to that we will spend God’s money – even going into debt, so that we can be more relevant to the crowd, or present a better experience, or God help us, so that we can provide a better ‘experience’ for our visitors in hopes that we can attract more visitors that the church down the road. Individually, our greed drives some of us to unrecoverable debt, divorce, even crime and ultimately separation from God.

What does God tell us about this? It’s not surprising that greed is listed as one of the traditional ‘seven deadly sins’, a list by the way, that you will not find itemized in scripture. The Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of the most objectionable vices that has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen humanity's tendency to sin.

The final version of the list consists of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. The Catholic Church divided sin into two principal categories, something that the bible does not do. "Venial sins", are categorized as relatively minor and could be forgiven through any sacramentals or sacraments of the church, and the more severe "capital" or mortal sins. Mortal sins are believed to destroy the life of grace and create the threat of eternal damnation unless either absolved through the sacrament of Penance or forgiven through ‘perfect contrition’ on the part of the penitent.

While all of these sins are harmful to our lives, our spirits, and grieve the Holy Spirit, greed seems to be all around us and all the time. Lust is used to feed our greed [ads and commercials with inappropriately dressed models or suggestive language to manipulate you to buy something]. Pride is used to feed our greed [You deserve this!]. Envy is used to feed our greed [He has something really cool, you should have one of those too!]. I heard an ad on the radio today for a ‘caviar facial’. I started thinking, why would anyone wants to spend that kind of time and money to sit with a bed of rotting fish eggs on their face? But hey, apparently, it is the ‘in’ thing to do for those that concerned about their complexion.

But yet greed is such that it will drive us to do just about anything. Forgetting about our relationship with God seems to be one of the first things that are left behind as personal greed and materialism takes a hold of us. Not only do we WANT things, we will do almost anything to get them, in the process feeding our own greed, when we think we are simply fulfilling a desire that we deserve to fill.

James spoke about this in chapter 4 of his Epistle. When you read this verse (James 4:2), you get a better idea of what greed can do to us. How hard we will WORK, how dramatically we will change our lives, all so that we might have, that which we do not really need. We covet, we murder, and worse. While we might relate to coveting something, for the most part we feel like this is as far as it goes. But often, we end up working in our flesh, fight hard for even using less than honorable means. Manipulation, deceit, by lying, hiding things, doing harm to another person or bring doubt into their mind or heart.

We will do all of these things, and yet God tells us this:

• All we must do is ask.

Why do we feel like we have to work so hard to get what we need in life? I think it is mostly because we work for what we want, when what we want is not what we really need, and God knows it. So rather than stabilize and sanctify our lives by making our requests known to God daily, being prayerful in all that we do and consider, we ask in greed, ignorance and in the flesh for what we want, rather than what we need.

Here James says we are warring, not wanting. Our flesh is overcoming our Spirit, and our wants overshadow our needs.

Materialism is killing the American Christian. We need to balance our lives on the Word, not on our pile of stuff. Hey, I’m with you in that I find the latest electronic gadgetry cool, and very often helpful. I’d love to ‘have’ a bigger TV, or a better camera. But I ‘need’ neither. What I need is a stringer prayer life. What I need is more fellowship with God’s people, leaders, and my wife and kids. What I need is to forget about the latest trend in ‘the church’ and get on my knees before God and ask Him what I must do to serve Him better and to grow our church. THAT’S what I need.

I see Christian brothers and sisters bust their backs to get a boat, or a certain type of coat or brands of jeans or t-shirt – and yet they examine their lives and cannot understand why people do not look to them as support as Christians, and why God is not blessing them spiritually.

I’m so looking forward to what God is planning to do with our church body ion Wednesday nights. Every day He gives me something more to ponder and pray about. I can see God opening a big old can of Holy Spirit on us, and I pray that I can do my job to see that this is exactly what happens.