Greed Is Good?
Is greed good?
The short answer is no. The long answer is…no. If you’ve seen the movie Wall Street and maybe even if you haven’t, you know that Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas gives this impassioned speech to a room full of stockholders where he bodly proclaims that “Greed is good.” But the truth is greed isn’t good. Greed sucks away at your soul. Greed turns us against each other. And greed hurts us, not only as individuals, but as a society. At the beginning of the pandemic, people were hoarding the weirdest things like toilet paper and Pokemon cards. But there was one product everyone needed – hand sanitizer. Everyone was looking for it and nobody had it. Except the Colvin brothers. They wanted to get in on the ground floor and cash in on other people’s desperation in the middle of a pandemic. They bought nearly 20,000 bottles of hand sanitizer – basically wiping out the entire area where they lived around Tennessee and Kentucky and then reselling them for between $8 and $70 a bottle! And it worked! They were making a killing! At least until Amazon cracked down and the Attorney General threatened them for price gouging during a national emergency. Only then did they decide to do the “right thing.” When they got caught.[1] Otherwise they felt fine charging $70 a bottle and putting a normal priced item out of reach for many people. During a pandemic. Where people were dying by the millions. Where is the “good” in that?
The truth is giving, for lack of a better word, is good.
Giving is right. Giving works. Giving in all of its forms, giving of our time, our talents, and our gifts, is what has proven to be successful in our society. Just as science has backed up our claim that prayer is good and church is good, science again helps us explain why giving is good. It doesn’t just psychologically makes us happier people, but it does so biologically as well.[3] The very act of giving has been “linked to the release of oxytocin, a hormone…that induces feelings of warmth, euphoria, and connection to others.”[4] Giving is good for our health in other ways, too. It’s associated with lower blood pressure, less depression, increased self-esteem, lower stress, and longer life.[5] Who doesn’t want that? And better marriages. Couples who do small acts of generosity for one another on a regular basis are happier than those who don’t.[6] Not only that but giving is contagious! Studies have found that “altruism can spread by three degrees.”[7] Meaning you’re not only giving to your friend but their friends and their friends and their friends by your one act of kindness.
But God already knew all of this.
Paul wrote about it in the Bible. If you have a Bible or a Bible app on your phone would you go to 2 Corinthians 9 beginning with verse 6. 2 Corinthians 9:6. God is awfully concerned about our giving. And not because he needs money. Why would God need money? But because giving has such a profound effect on our lives. It not only has tangible health and social benefits but spiritual as well as Paul writes about to the church at Corinth. In this part of the letter, Paul is asking the church to continue to give to the ministry he is involved in so that they can “complete the work (2 Cor 8:11)” they have already started. He mentions the church at Corinth was the first to give and the first to openly support him, but that the work is not yet done. What’s important in this passage is to keep focused on Paul’s argument about WHY you should give. Paul never asks for a specific amount of money. He doesn’t talk about tithing or about how much a “good Christian” gives. His entire argument is about a person’s relationship with God through giving. About how our relationship grows as we give. About our attitude of giving. And about how giving helps others to see the love of God.
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:
“They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.”
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. 14 And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! – 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Giving is a matter of the heart not your pocketbook.
It isn’t a duty but a discipline. Giving trains us to be more like God who gave his only Son for us. God doesn’t require of us any more than he has already done himself. But how we give is as important as the act itself. If we feel forced to help rather than giving help freely, it just isn’t as satisfying.[8] And that goes back to why God loves a cheerful giver. The attitude you have in the act of giving is as important as the gift itself. If your gift is given with reluctance or resentment, then is it really a gift? Can you receive the benefits of giving if you didn’t want to do it in the first place? As C.S. Lewis wrote in his famous book Mere Christianity, “Right actions done for the wrong reason do not help build the internal quality or character…We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.” God doesn’t want our obedience. God wants us to be of good character. A cheerful giver is one who does it out of love and out of a desire to help and do good. A reluctant giver thinks his money could be better spent elsewhere. A cheerful giver understands it’s about the act of giving God wants to mold and shape in us. A reluctant giver is weighed down by the results.
Sometimes we focus on the wrong thing.
It seems a no-brainer God wants us to do the most good for the most people. But if we use that as an excuse not to give at all, then we are really missing the point. There’s a scene in the TV show Sports Night where Dan is wondering who he should give money to. He spends pretty much the whole episode trying to figure out what to do, pondering which group is most deserving and how should he decide that and who isn’t getting enough. His friend Casey tells him, “You know, while we’ve been having this conversation a couple of people have probably died from something you could have cured.”[9] After struggling with it even more, Casey looks at Dan and says, “Can I say something? You’re not going to solve everybody’s problems. In fact, you’re not going to solve anybody’s problems so you know what you should do? Anything. As much of it and as often as you can.” As human beings, we want to focus on results, but sometimes its as simple as helping the person right in front of you. We can’t help everyone. We can’t even help everyone who “deserves” it. All we can do is all we can do. If we spend all of our time worrying about whether or not that person or those people or that group or this organization “deserves” it, we’ll never do anything. Instead, God is looking for people of a certain character. And that’s a person with a giving attitude.
As it says in the passage, giving has its own rewards.
Beyond what we give materially, the act itself is a witness to God’s love in us and for us. It’s a way for us to express our love of God and our appreciation for what God has done in our lives. Paul never once writes about material results. Instead, he writes about what the ACT of giving does for us and for our community. He writes in verses 12 and 13, “This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.” When we act with a generous heart, people see God in us and will praise God because of us and at the same time we are performing an act of gratitude for God because of what God has done in us. Are there benefits to giving? Sure, but those are perks to the real reason we give – God. Through our giving we are sharing God’s love with the world and giving thanks for that love in return.
When Emma was two she LOVED M&Ms.
The chocolate ones of course. And it was hilarious to watch her eat them because they are supposed to melt in your mouth and not in your hands, right? Well, somehow Emma would find a way to get it all over herself. I mean they would end up on her hands, her shirt, her face, and then she gets this little chocolate stain all over her mouth. It used to be so funny, but that’s just how much she enjoyed it. One day, I had given her a small snack bag of M&M’s and she starts plugging them in her mouth like usual, when she looked up at me and looked at her bag of M&M’s and as if she realized that I didn’t have anything to eat, she gave me the rest of her bag and said, “Here, Daddy.” There’s only one reason she gave me that bag, and that’s out of love. And if a two-year old little girl can give away her favorite thing to her Daddy just because she loves him, then can’t we give more of ourselves out of love for our Father in Heaven? Our God wants us to give with the cheerfulness of a little child, not because of what we get out of it, but because we love him and want to show that love to the world.
[1] https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1120w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2020_11/1548750/200315-matt-colvin-one-time-use-se-656p.JPG
[3] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/5_ways_giving_is_good_for_you
[4] Ibid
[5] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2016/11/why-giving-is-good-for-your-health/
[6] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/happy-marriages_n_1152080.html
[7] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/5_ways_giving_is_good_for_you
[8] https://my.happify.com/hd/science-of-giving-infographic/
[9] The Quality of Mercy at 29K,” Sports Night
Craig's Corner 
