Greed By Any Other Name

I commented recently about Dutchman and his insecurity over wealth.  Yeah, the most charitable man I know and yet starved to acquire wealth!  Not a judgment call on my part, just an observation.  I am glad he can acquire wealth, I am just concerned over what is behind this ...

And on Sunday I was thinking on 1 Timothy 6:9-10 and remembering my comments about my friend the other day.


You would sell your soul to your company, work the long hours, for only the promise of reward or hope for it.
You become a target for temptation.
You will be driven by impulse.
You will fall into the trap of debt, credit cards, chasing after materialism.
You acquire and desire senseless things of no real value to you now or ever.
You will chase after money, power, sex, things to reflect position or wealth to others.
You will lose your sensitivity to God, money and things are neutral but how you use them can distance you from God.
You will regret chasing materialism...
This is all 100% preventable.

Think of the big Lottery winners, virtually none of them were able to retain even a percentage of the wealth they acquired!
Only God is capable of ruling your life without ruining or destroying you!

When you consider that you will be leaving this life with nothing you can take with you, save for those deposits you have made in Heaven, then it should behoove us to look to those things we can do that do have eternal meaning.

Your investment in others is the only thing of any value to you eternally.

Your relationships, witnessing, care, concern, prayers, physical helps for others, etc.  I am sure you can add many more items to a list of things we can of eternal value, to invest in others.

However, we must remember the rich young ruler - someone whom was capable of having done it all right.  He had kept the law - as hard as that is to have imagined!

Yet, Jesus knew that his heart was not right with God - because his hope was in his wealth and possessions.  If he could just walk away, his place would have been with Jesus.  And he did walk away, but not from things, he walked away from Jesus and the life He could be given, not earn.

And so I thought on Dutchman and his benevolent life compared with his quest for riches.  I now realized that he had bought into the lie - "I will be rewarded with greater riches based upon how generous I am to others".  And I was stunned to have finally realized that even the basis for his generosity was the desire for greater wealth!  Crestfallen, I have thought on this, this week and decided perhaps there is a lesson in here for each of us.  Hence, why I wrote this.

Why do you help others?  Is it because you believe God will return the blessing back to you (Hinduism), because they in turn will bless another because of what you did for them (Buddhism), is it because they are family and you must (Judaism and Islam), or is it because you were told to be like Jesus and take compassion upon even the least of all ... ?  (and the least, in Biblical terms, refers to the widows and orphans because they have no advocate - except for you.)

Something to think about.