“Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Greed. Don’t you get irritated with greedy people? The majority of us work for an employer. You ask for a raise and they say no or just a cost of living raise is all you get. Aren’t they so greedy? Your making just 30K a year while they are pulling in 300K a year. It hardly seems fair. Surely they could afford to pay you more if they were paid less. Perhaps you are a small business owner and your competitors are large companies. You work so hard to bring in for your company 100K a year while the big companies sit back and easily bring in millions of dollars. They don’t care about you. They actually hope you go out of business. These people seem so greedy.
What should we do about their greed? Perhaps we should punish them somehow? Maybe we could make them give half their salaries to taxes. That might not be enough though. That business owner was pulling in 300K a year and half his salary is still 150K. Maybe we should make him pay 75% of his salary to taxes. He will still make 75K. Doesn’t that make you sick that a fourth of his salary is still more than twice yours. We should also make them hire more people and pay all of their employees 50K a year. Not to mention, how should we treat these people? Let’s protest them. Let’s call them the scum of the earth. Let’s “stick it to the man.”
For those of us that want to live according to the Bible, is there a problem with this? God is opposed to greed as we saw in the above verse. Maybe the above treatment is their punishment from God. Shouldn’t we get even with them? However, there is that verse that says “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). If we are truly surrendered to the Word of God then we cannot have this vengeful attitude towards the rich.
In addition, we are asked to keep our “character…free from the love of money, being content with what [we] have” (Hebrews 13:5). When we consider this, to hold the opening attitude is the very opposite of contentment. In fact we are being disobedient to the Lord in two areas. We are lacking in contentment and seeking to take revenge. Is the attitude above a godly one then? It sure seems right to get back at those who seem to be hindering us financially. Doesn’t it?
However, there is another problem. The very attitude described above is also known as envy. The Bible tells us that we should “not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:26). Also, interestingly, in Ephesians 5:5 in the NASB it is said that, “no…covetous man…has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ.” This is interesting because what the NASB translates covetous, the NIV translates as greedy. In other words, we are pointing the finger at the business owners calling them greedy because we are greedy for what they have. Again, is this a godly attitude?
If we lived during biblical days and had the opening attitude, we would have hated Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz, Solomon, Job, and many others (Genesis 13:2, 26:12-14, 31:1, Ruth 2:1, 2 Chronicles 1:11-12, Job 42:10). These men were pleasing to God when they were rich. It was not because of their riches, but the riches were not displeasing to God. While there are greedy rich people, could it be that some of these rich people that we hate so much are godly people enjoying the blessings of God or the fruit of their hard work?
Again, we are told to not seek revenge, to be content with what we have, and to not envy. With that in mind, perhaps all the things that society and politicians are attempting to do against the rich are not good. The attitude is motivated by envy and revenge. Let us consider this. Perhaps we shouldn’t support legislation or politicians that are based in envy even though it may feel good. While there are biblical teachings for how the rich should live, there are also biblical teachings on how the rest of us should live. Perhaps we should be a little more concerned about how we live before we attempt to force others to live a certain way. Is your attitude a godly one?
