Another 30 Days of Wisdom. Greed.

Nathan: 00:00

“My son, do not walk in the way with them, Keep your foot from their

path; For their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed blood. Surely, in vain the net is spread In the sight of any bird; But they lie in wait for their own blood, They lurk secretly for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; It takes away the life of its owners.”

Solomon. Proverbs 1:15-19. Hi, it’s Nathan, and this is day 8 of ANOTHER 30 Days of Wisdom. The real problem with greed, is the illusion of success it creates. Like the gambling addict who believes they can outsmart the house, yet continue to lose until buried in debt, is the person greedy for gain. Their carefully crafted schemes to outmaneuver others and pad their pockets with wealth, ultimately become the undoing of the greedy themselves. And it’s not because somebody catches them.

There are plenty of folks who apparently outsmarted the system. Or so it seems. The fact is, greed itself is the deadly poison lacing the intoxicating cocktail. A person may outsmart the justice system or dance through the legal loopholes—but the poison of greed will claim its thirsty victims. Every time. In this penetrating counsel, Solomon puts his finger on one of our deepest held delusions: I can get away with it, if I don’t get caught. Put another way, if they can’t catch me, it don’t hurt me. Truth: we need to stop lying to ourselves. The poison is present in the action itself—getting caught is irrelevant to evil’s impact on the perpetrator.

However small it may appear—a small, insignificant lie. A little manipulation to achieve our objective. A few minutes of selfish pleasure. We’ve swallowed the poison, whether or not the law ever catches up. Truth is, every violation of moral law poisons the violator. Period. In the end, our need for redemption isn’t primarily from some legal consequences for our actions, but from the corrosive, life-sucking impact of those actions upon ourselves.