Are You Voluntarily Blind?

On Friday’s post I wrote about greed and said that one of the problems is that blindness to the condition is an intrinsic part of the condition. Jesus deals with greed in Luke 12 and in verse 15 He says, “Take care,” or some translations say, “Watch out,” “and be on your guard against all kinds of” greed.

Think about it, Jesus never says watch out for adultery—not because it isn’t as destructive—it is very destructive to the family and to you, but it isn’t as deceptive. You know when you are committing adultery, there is no doubt when you have crossed that line, but you don’t know when greed takes over. When you are greedy or materialistic—you won’t feel greedy. You have to watch for it.

A part of the problem is our culture seems to be more and more blended. You find people who make six figures rubbing shoulders with people who make seven figures and instead of looking at how they spend their money, they look at how the person who makes seven figures spends their money and then they feel pretty good about themselves. If I compare my spending habits with those of Michael Jordon I don’t look greedy or materialistic. Juliet Shore wrote the book, Overspent American. In that book she found that only one third of Americans making over 100K feel they make enough to buy all that they need. Can you believe that? Wealthy people in the most wealthy country in the world don’t think they can buy what they need. That is the pressure that is destroying our families and the source of the problem is money sickness—greed.

Watch out—ask questions. Be suspicious. Don’t trust yourself with money—ask a lot of questions and ask others to help you evaluate yourself. Ask questions like, do you really need more, do you really need that, is it really time to get a bigger house or a newer car, couldn’t you live more simply? I need to ask myself this question, “In my pursuit of money do I do things, do I make deals, or am I willing to sell products that are bad for some people?” Am I so willing to make a dollar that I am willing to sacrifice Biblical principles to do it? If you refuse to ask—you are refusing to deal with it. Refusing to ask questions makes you voluntarily blind.

Here is another way to see if you have money sickness—imagine people from other parts of the world watching what you spend. Imagine having a man from Ethiopia, where the average person makes an average of $100 a year. Imagine them following you around and watching all that you buy and then ask them if we are watching out for all kings of greed. Let me give you an example—years ago, I was in Kenya years ago and two of my American and I were talking about the possibility of being able to fly to Mombassa earlier in the day which would have made the trip much easier for us. One of the pastors said, “There would be a small fine,” and we asked, “How small?” Turns out we could change our flight for only $13 a person and to us that was a no-brainer. We spoke up and said, “Let’s do it,” but a Kenya pastor who was listening said, “You can afford to lose that much money?” It sort of put things into perspective—what was nothing to us, was major for someone who wondered how he was going to afford the bus ticket home. Or if you are like the children in the picture who had no guarantee of a meal tomorrow.

If we are going to be able to watch out for Money Sickness we will first have to Understand Money Sickness.

Greed happens when money is too important—too central to you. Where do we draw the line—when does it become too important? You will always draw the line too far from us. Jesus gives us six signs that we have crossed the line. He gives those signs in pairs, let’s look at them over the next few days