Greed: “No, I’ll never have enough”

In the third of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Jane Williams highlights how Greed destroys both individuals and societies.

Jane Williams

Jane Williams is the McDonald Professor in Christian Theology at St Mellitus College.

In the old Humphrey Bogart film, Key Largo, the villain, played with a vicious childishness by Edward G. Robinson, is asked by Bogie what he wants. Rocco, Robinson’s character, thinks for a bit and then says that what Rocco wants is MORE! ‘Will you ever have enough?’, Bogie asks, and Robinson thinks about it for a moment before replying, ‘I never have so far. No, I’ll never have enough’.

That is Greed, in a vivid nutshell. Rocco doesn’t want anything particular, and he doesn’t value anything in itself; he just has a vast, unspecific, insatiable desire for anything and everything, particularly if it belongs to someone else.

Rapacious greed does not love what it desires; it is driven to possess; it does not value what it has.

Greed, like all the Seven Deadly Sins, is a ‘capital’ or ‘cardinal’ sin, meaning it is a disposition from which destructive, abusive actions flow. Having this over-mastering tendency to Greed makes us act in a whole variety of ways that are damaging and abusive to others and to ourselves. Greed leads to a variety of ‘sins’. Rapacious greed does not love what it desires; it is driven to possess; it does not value what it has, because while there is ‘more’ out there somewhere, greed must have it. It does not care what or whom it attacks or destroys: anything that stands in its way must be obliterated. It does not want to admire or use what it seeks, it merely needs to possess it, and the moment the sought after thing is achieved, all-consuming greed moves onto the next thing, always seeking ‘more’, always despising what it has, as not enough.

Greed is destructive both on the personal front and also as it shapes societies. Individuals ruled by greed cannot maintain love or friendship or loyalty: their eyes are always on the next thing, always hungry for what they have not got. They leave behind them, without a backward glance, hurt and broken friends, family, colleagues, jobs. And if the fallout is clear for all the people around someone driven by greed, it is also obvious that it destroys the greedy, too.

Overpowering greed empties even the greedy of worth; they can never be successful, because they do not have what they want – everything.

Nothing can ever satisfy someone consumed by greed; there is no rest, no peace, no pleasure, because the world is full of things still to be grabbed at. Jesus is quoted as having said, ‘Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be’. It’s a warning to beware of what you long for, because we are so powerfully shaped by our desires. But if all Greed longs for is ‘more’, then, in the end, the greedy person or society has no heart at all. It is shaped only by a drive for possession, opening up a vast and echoing emptiness where an actual longed-for being or thing should live. Overpowering greed empties even the greedy of worth; they can never be successful, because they do not have what they want – everything.

It is obvious how Greed is deadly for individuals, but it is also deadly when it becomes a motivating force for society at large. The media have recently been talking again about ‘greedflation’. The theory behind the term is much debated, but the word itself is instantly memorable. Institutions that are governed primarily by the need for ‘more’ drive an insatiable economy, always needing more consumers, more profit, more rewards. Dissatisfaction and envy are the necessary tools of a society, an economy, of Greed. Individuals and groups that try to opt out of this out-of-control consumerism are viewed as a threat, and must be diminished, dismissed, cast out. It is dangerous in such a society ever to ask, ‘Do we really need more?’ That is the Emperor’s New Clothes question, which must be avoided at all costs. Surveys that ask people at different income levels whether they feel that they have enough nearly always find that everyone would like just a little bit more. Everyone would like to be at the next level up of income and possessions; but if they achieve that next level, then, strangely, they find that it is actually the level above that that really want.

Contentment lays an axe to the roots of Greed. It allows us to see what we have and value it.

The World Happiness Report, which has been regularly updated for the last 10 years, works with a complex set of definitions of what makes for happiness, for individuals and for societies. Finland regularly tops the chart of Happiest Countries in the world, which Finns find a bit puzzling, apparently. They don’t see themselves as cheerful, jolly people, but they do speak of a national characteristic that might be described as contentment. Contentment lays an axe to the roots of Greed. It allows us to see what we have and value it, rather than despising it because there are things we do not have.

One of the values that The World Happiness Report notes as making for greater happiness is altruism – doing good and receiving goodness from others makes both parties happier. The Christian tradition has known this for a long time. Cardinal Sins have their opposing Cardinal Virtues, dispositions that we can cultivate to help us to free ourselves from enslaving habits, like Greed. ‘Charity’ is the Cardinal Virtue that undermines the sin of Greed. When we give to others from our own resources, of time, money, attention, care, prayer, help of any kind, we begin to loosen the deadly grip of insatiable Greed upon ourselves and our world. Greed can’t live alongside Charity, or altruism; charity sees real people and situations in need, and supplies what it can from its own resources; Greed sees only more and more objects to be acquired, never able to see what it already has, never able to share or be content.

Deadly Sins lead to behaviour that makes for misery, both for those driven by them, and for those on the receiving end of them. That is why they are called ‘deadly’. They are not just a bit naughty; they are actively destructive of human flourishing, both personal and communal. There is so much in our society that positively encourages Greed, the reckless desire for More, which can never be satisfied. But there are ways of combatting this most pernicious of habits.

One is the practice of gratitude: instead of thinking about what we haven’t got, or would like to have, or what someone else has, we can think of what we have got, and think of it as gift, something to say thank you for. It’s a good habit to build into every day, perhaps as we go to bed, taking just a few minutes to think about the good things that have come to us that day: a child’s smile, a gleam of sunshine, a hug from a friend or partner, a delicious piece of bread; everyday things that we can take for granted, in which case they go unnoticed; or we can see that they are gifts to be grateful for, which enlarge our spirit and our wellbeing. Gratitude is a virtuous circle: it is lovely to be on the receiving end of gratitude, as well as to practice being grateful. And gratitude often leads to another excellent practice for undermining Greed, which is charity, or altruism. If we are learning how to say thank you for what we have, we may also want to share what we now notice that we have. If we’ve given the gift of gratitude, and seen how it makes us and the receiver feel, we may want to extend that further and further. Worth a try?

Explainer

Creed

Death & life

1 November 2023

5 min read

The lost art of dying well and what we can learn from it today

Living well in order to die well doesn’t simply happen. It takes work. It takes preparation. For All Souls Day, Lydia Dugdale asks if we are prepared for death.

Lydia Dugdale

Lydia Dugdale is the author of The Lost Art of Dying. She is Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. She is a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients.

A medieval book illustration of a person dying in bed.

A 15th Century ars moriendi, or ‘art of dying’ image.

Basel University, via WikiCommons.

The first of November marks All Saints Day on many church calendars—a day when we Christians remember our martyrs together with all the faithful, both living and departed. On that day, we celebrate that our communion is not simply with one another on earth but is also with all saints of all time, including those who have died.

For some people, the notion of fellowship with departed saints might be quite exciting. They may have pondered questions about the saints since school assemblies or RE lessons. What was racing through Abraham’s mind when he attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac? What would Mary say a sinless Jesus was like as a toddler? Did Jonah float around inside the great fish, or did he find something on which to perch himself?

But others among us might wish to skip All Saints Day altogether. Talk of dead saints feels positively medieval, even a bit morbid. Some of us might wonder about our own saintliness—or lack thereof. Could we really experience ineffable joy in an afterlife? Moreover, the very suggestion of an afterlife implies that we ourselves must die—an uncomfortable prospect for most of us.

Such divergent reactions to the day are revealing. On the one hand, the idea of having saints to remember is to inspire us to live well. They invite us to examine their lives and to grow ourselves in response. On the other hand, they remind us that our days are numbered. And because our days are numbered, we should attend carefully to what it means to live wisely. Saints teach us that if we want to die well, we must live well.

But living well in order to die well doesn’t simply happen. It takes work. It takes preparation. Which is why this year on All Saints Day it’s worth asking the question: Am I prepared for death?

Death exists as a paradox for Christians—as something at once lurking and vanquished.

In the late Middle Ages, the ars moriendi, or ‘art of dying’ genre of literature developed in response to mass loss of life from a fourteenth-century outbreak of bubonic plague. The genre consisted of a number of handbooks on how to prepare for death. Although the earliest text was anonymous, historians believe that its authorship had a connection to the Western Church. After the Reformation, Protestant versions began to circulate, and later handbooks omitted religious particularity altogether. The handbooks grew in popularity throughout the West for more than 500 years.

This notion of living well to die well lay at the core of the various iterations of the ars moriendi. Early texts warned readers that five temptations lead to dying poorly—temptations to doubt, despair, impatience, greed, and pride. If you don’t want to die a doubting, despairing, impatient, greedy, and proud person, you must cultivate the virtues of faith, hope, patience, generosity, and humility now. But the ars moriendi texts were very clear that virtue did not happen to a person all at once at the end of life. Rather, it required habituation. Cultivating virtues was the work of a lifetime. If you want to be remembered as a person of sound character, a generous person of hope and good will toward others, you cannot delay making such attributes a regular practice. If you are willing to be martyred for your faith—as some of those early saints were—you have got to be sure it is a faith worth dying for.

I once met a man who had converted from the religion of radical self-centeredness to Christianity. When I asked him why, he told me that of all the world’s religions, Christianity had the best story. As with the martyred saints, it was for him a story worth dying for. And All Saints Day reminds us that in Christianity, death is stranger than you might think.

Death exists as a paradox for Christians—as something at once lurking and vanquished. Death is the enemy that at long last will be destroyed, and death has already been swallowed up in victory. But you might ask: if death has already been defeated, what remains to be destroyed? And if death will be destroyed, how has it then been defeated? This enigma might partially explain why many regular church attenders are neither physically nor spiritually prepared for death. Researchers at Harvard University have shown that people who describe themselves as most supported by their religious communities are also most likely to reject hospice care and instead to elect aggressive life-extending technology.

The story goes as follows. Death is an enemy because it suggests rejection of God. From the beginning, God tells our forebearer Adam that he can freely eat of any tree in the garden but one. If he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he will die. Thus, from the beginning, God equates the possibility of human disobedience with the actuality of death.

Of course, Adam and Eve eat the proverbial apple. And when they do, they don’t immediately die, but they experience a sort of death. For the first time, they become filled with shame and fear. They hide themselves from God. They cast blame. God tells them that moving forward their life will be filled with great suffering. God says to Adam, ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Disobedience is what Christians call ‘sin’—and it brings death. Sin severs that once harmonious relationship between God and people—a fact that also grieves God, which is why God does not let death have the final word.

The story gets better. Since we humans cannot possibly undo the drastic results of our disobedience, God becomes fully human in Jesus Christ, so liable to death, while also retaining full, divinity which cannot die. Then, as a human on a cross, he dies as the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of humankind. But this God-Man does not stay dead. After three days in the tomb, Christ is resurrected, defeating death, on what has come to be known as Easter Sunday. Christ’s resurrection functions as a sort of guarantee that all God’s people will one day be resurrected and receive new bodies, that day on which the great enemy of death will be destroyed once and for all. If Adam and Eve brought death into the world, the resurrection hope is that death will be no more.

This year on All Saints Day we have the opportunity to consider what it means to commune with ‘all saints’ extending back to Adam and forward to future generations. We have the opportunity to study the saints and then examine ourselves. What sort of people are we becoming? Are we living well to die well, as the ars moriendi handbooks teach? And of all the stories out there, which provides the greatest hope in life and in death?

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