Where do Easter and business intersect? Well, what about at greed.
According to Dr Brian Rosner, principal of Ridley Melbourne,
an Anglican theological college, greed has been glamorised by the market
economy and is a forgotten sin.
Maybe it's this that allows those Christians who are business
people, economists and politicians to share their colleagues'
commitment to unending economic growth and an ever-rising material
standard of living.
In his book, Beyond Greed, Rosner defines greed as
''wanting more money and possessions'', a refusal to share your
possessions and ''the opposite of contentment''.
Greed has always been with us, and insatiability isn't unique
to modern Western civilisation, but we're certainly giving it a
workout. To us, money is the simplest measure of whether you're winning
at the game of life.
But what is unique to our age, according to another author,
is the cultural acceptance, even encouragement of insatiability. A
survey of regular churchgoers in America found that whereas almost 90
per cent said greed was a sin, fewer than 20 per cent said they were
ever taught that wanting a lot of money was wrong, and 80 per cent said
they wished they had more money than they did.
It seems that, by comparison with the past, greed is regarded
as a trivial sin. A retired priest has recounted that, in his long
years of service, all kinds of sins and concerns were confessed to him
in the confessional, but never once the sin of greed.
But Rosner's having none of that. He says greed is at the
heart of three major threats to our existence as individuals and
societies: pollution, terrorism and crime.
Pollution is caused by human unwillingness to pay the price
for the cleaner alternative (ain't that the truth, Tony). ''On any
reckoning, climatic change due to the effects of pollution could cause
major 'natural' disasters in the days to come,'' he says.
In most cases of terrorism, each side accuses the other of
some form of greed, whether involving people, land or property. ''Greed
also fits both sides of the equation in many cases of crime,'' he says.
''Thieves steal because they want more, and often because they perceive
the victims as having more than their fair share.''
The greedy are those who love money inordinately, trust money
excessively, serve money slavishly and are never satisfied with their
possessions.
Rosner says greed is a form of religion, the religion of
Mammon. Literally, mammon means wealth or possessions, but it could just
as easily be taken as the biblical word for the economy. And if greed
is a religion, that makes it a form of the greatest of all sins:
idolatry. (First Commandment: you shall have no other gods before me.)
In Western society, the economy has achieved what can only be described as a status equal to that of the sacred.
''Like God, the economy, it is thought, is capable of
supplying people's needs without limit. Also, like God, the economy is
mysterious, unknowable and intransigent,'' he says. ''It has both great
power and, despite the best managerial efforts of its associated clergy,
great danger. It is an inexhaustible well of good(s) and is credited
with prolonging life, giving health and enriching our lives.
''Money, in which we put our faith, and advertising, which we
adore, are among its rituals. The economy also has its sacred symbols,
which evoke undying loyalty, including company logos, product names and
credit cards.''
Rosner says we have to distinguish between the legitimate
enjoyment of material things, which the Bible takes for granted, and an
illegitimate and unhealthy attachment to wealth as an end in itself.
But if we don't want to be greedy, what should we be? Contented.
''To be content is to be satisfied, to enjoy a balance
between one's desires and their fulfilment. To be content is in effect
to experience freedom from want,'' he says. But note, it's being content
with your own lot, not those of others less fortunate than you.
And the other side of the contentment coin is giving. Rosner
says that if Charles Dickens' Scrooge epitomises greed, giving is
epitomised by Victorian jam maker Sir William Hartley. Hartley
regularly and voluntarily increased wages, practised profit-sharing and
supplied low-cost, high-quality housing to some of his employees and
free medical attention to all of them.
He was also concerned for his suppliers, and would amend
contracts in their favour if a change in the price of fruit and economic
circumstances conspired against their making a decent living.
