My dictionary defines greed as intense and selfish desire for something – money, food and power.
The Holy Book has nothing complimentary to say about greedy guts; most of who are lay-backs, indolent and un-enterprising ones, who love the high life but are lazy to be productive. It says of such people in Second Chronicle, Chapter 10, verses 16 to 19. In the new international version of the Life Application Bible, King Rehoboam, in trying to have it all, lost almost everything. Motivated by greed and power, he pressed too hard and divided his kingdom.
The Bible made us understand that the king didn’t need more money or power because he had inherited the richest kingdom in the world. He didn’t need more control because he was already king but because his demands were based on selfishness rather than reason or spiritual discernment, he inexorably allowed greed to consume him.
The lesson in this biblical narrative is that those who insist on having it all, and more often than not, leave God behind in the pursuit of their selfish desires, often wind up with little or nothing. A once peaceful and united kingdom was divided into two halves, with only two tribes remaining loyal to David’s line and accepted Rehoboam’s rule and called their nation Judah; while the other ten followed Jeroboam and called theirs, Israel.
Rehoboam’s foolishness, borne of his selfish desires, divided his own kingdom and he tried to reunite it by force, forgetting that true unity, cannot be forced; that it must, instead, be the free response of willing hearts. The best way to enlist the loyalty of friends, associates, even children or anyone else under your charge and win their cooperation and respect, is through love, glaring display of selflessness, instead of trying to gain their support and submission to your wish, through force.
And the Yoruba people also agree and put it succinctly that whatever the greedy person has in his possession, is not really his; as he, by natural course of events, will disgorge ALL, willy nilly, the very moment he approximates others’ commonwealth to himself. “Nkan ti olokan-jua ba ni, ki ise ti e”, that’s the way the Yoruba person defines anyone seized by unbridled greed.
Such people often camouflage their greed and call it ambition. But the truth of the matter is that Levites in the Bible wanted the power of the priesthood. Like Korah, we often desire the special honour or qualities God has given others, not content with, or appreciating what God has deposited in us because we love to be copy-cats. Perhaps Korah didn’t realise that he had significant, worthwhile abilities and responsibilities of his own but he ended up losing everything because his ambition was for more and because his inappropriate ambition is greed in disguise.
Of course the lesson for those who are not too consumed by greed to learn, is that one should concentrate on finding the special purpose God has for him or her instead of wishing you were in someone else’s shoes. Have I communicated to, or with, someone?