And in the back of the comic books there was usually a section devoted to really cool gadgets. It was kind of a classified section for everything an adolescent boy might dream of having. X-ray vision glasses that would allow you to see through walls.
Practical jokes like chewing gum that would cause your mouth to foam or your tongue to turn black. Miracle methods for developing muscles. It was the itching powder that did it.
Most of those things inspired me to think, Man, my life would be so much better if I just had that. Now don't ask me why it was the itching powder that most inspired my need to acquire, but that was it. My friend, Philip Jaderborg, and I pooled our allowance money and sent off an order for itching powder.
You know, I think it was Old Bay seasoning. That's what it looked like when it came like somebody had taken some Old Bay and put it in a plastic bag. No instructions on how to use it and we really weren't creative enough to figure out how to inconspicuously put it down somebody's back or in somebody's underwear so we ended up using it on each other just to see if it worked.
You would think an episode like that would have started me down the path to virtue and to realizing that things, stuff was not going to be the magic cure for my desires, but like most everyone else in this society that is built on the need to get more stuff, I haven't shaken that childish belief that my life would be better if I just had that. You've seen the bumper sticker, The one who dies with the most toys wins ? I may not have that on my car, but that belief that I'm somehow in an unholy competition to get more stuff sometimes works on me.
We've talked each week about how insidious these sins are. Greed, I believe, is in a class by itself. Not only has greed managed to get close to us, it has managed to convince us that it's not even a vice.
It masquerades as a virtue. What do I mean? Well, think about how our economy is built on the notion of greed as good.
Advertising appeals to the acquisitive, covetous side of our natures. This iPod? It's not just a desirable little piece of technological wonder.
You need an iPod. This Hummer? You could rule the world with this vehicle!
This cereal? Your breakfast is going to be so much better with Count Chocula! Everywhere we look we are being told that there are things that we don't have that we not only want, but need.
This week I was in Nashville doing some filming for a DVD for a curriculum that I've been writing on vocation. For the first time in my life I had to sit and be made up for 30 minutes. The young woman doing the make-up said, You have very dry skin.
You should get some man lotion. Man lotion! I didn't even know there was such a thing.
And now that I know there is such a thing, how can I get along without it? I need man lotion! You can bet that before I went to location for the second day of filming I had bought me some man lotion!
This is how we get trained in the ways of greed. Henry Ford knew this when he started selling cars at the turn of the last century. He knew he couldn't just poll the people in the market to discover what people wanted.
As he said, If I had asked my customers what they wanted they'd have said, 'a faster horse.' [i] He felt he had to educate them on a need they didn't even know they had. We have even become convinced that buying things is a noble activity.
Shortly after the attacks on 9-11 and on at least one occasion since, our president has urged us to keep shopping as a patriotic exercise to support our economy. If you're like me, you probably felt a little uneasy about that. Of course, we want our economy to be healthy, but there is something wrong about the health of our nation being dependent on whether or not I own a TiVo or another pair of trendy shoes.
In the 1987 movie, Wall Street, Oliver Stone created a character that has come to symbolize the worst excesses of greed in our society. Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, is a New York financial tycoon who makes his millions by buying other companies, milking them of their profits and then selling out. In one of the most famous scenes in the movie, Gekko gets up at a stockholder's meeting of Teldar Paper and declares that what we generally have thought of as immoral is, in fact, a great civilizing impulse: The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Greed is good. This is where we have come.
Most of us would not agree with Gekko. Most of us believe that there are limits and that individuals, groups, corporations can all go too far in overreaching. But not many of us would agree that it is good to be greedy.
It's just hard to know where to draw the line. As Bishop Will Willimon puts it, I am pretty good at seeing when you have crossed the line but pretty poor at seeing when I have tripped over it myself.[iii] So what's a Christian to do when Greed clothes itself in the garb of a righteous person?
How do we know when we've gone too far? We need some stuff to survive, but when have we gone from simply living to being truly greedy? As with all these deadly sins, the reason they still beset us is because they have settled in very close to home.
Jesus knew this about us. The temptation to greed wasn't invented by the advertising industry. He knew how easy it was to be distracted by things and the desire for things.
He also knew how dangerous it was. It wasn't for nothing that he told the disciples that it was easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. In the gospel passage we read today, Jesus tells the story of a rich man who had an incredible harvest on his farm.
That's the good news. But he thinks to himself, Self, what am I going to do? I don't have enough space to put all of my stuff.
And since this was in the era before climate-controlled rental storage units, he said to himself, I think I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones so that I can put all of this grain in there. Sounds like a pretty reasonable plan if you've got the means to do it. But then he does something else.
He says to himself, Self, you are in the green. You've got good socked away for many years. It's party time!
(This is from the New Revised Alex Joyner translation of the Bible). Then God says to him..
.well, what does God say to him? In most translations you get to this part and it reads, You fool!
This very night your life demanded of you. And these things you have prepared, whose will they be? That makes it sound like what Jesus is trying to say is: You can't take it with you.
But there's another way to translate this. You could read the Greek as God saying, You fool! This very night, they are demanding your life from you.
And who is they? Those things. And in the back of the comic books there was usually a section devoted to really cool gadgets.
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