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Greed: A tale of two classes

Religious left opinion leader Diana Butler Bass and I are hardly theological confreres, but I have to say she makes a really good point here. Excerpt: This Black Friday, I expect that some religion commentators will write their yearly screed on the immorality of consumerism decrying the shopping frenzy gripping the nation on the day […]

Religious left opinion leader Diana Butler Bass and I are hardly theological confreres, but I have to say she makes a really good point here. Excerpt:

This Black Friday, I expect that some religion commentators will write their yearly screed on the immorality of consumerism decrying the shopping frenzy gripping the nation on the day after Thanksgiving.

But I am not going to join that chorus. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t love consumerism or the outburst of materialism that accompanies American Christmas celebrations. It is, however, tediously easy for people who write columns, ministers who preach sermons, or those who are generally comfortable with their jobs or finances to look down on the rushing mobs grabbing electronics from Wal-Mart shelves. When it comes to consumerism, there exists a tendency to blame the customers for bad behavior and greed.

Of course, they are greedy people everywhere, those who will do anything to gain advantage for themselves at the expense of others—people who live in a soulless world of material possessions. But the oddest thing about the folks in lines at those discount stores: They are mostly poor, working class, or marginally middle class. These are the very people who attend church regularly, express higher levels of belief in God, and are more likely to give a higher percentage of their income to those in need. Indeed, nearly every survey in religion shows that the poorer the American, the more likely they are to be both faithful and generous.

While I think one has to be careful about giving the poor a pass for immoral behavior because they are poor — a tendency the religious left tends to have, as if poverty, or relative poverty, conferred innocence — it is also true that the religious right tends to overlook greed when it manifests among the “respectable” upper classes. We see the insane wafflemaker frenzy at Wal-mart and rightly are revolted. But how is the greed so nakedly on display there worse than the greedy frenzy that has taken place, and regularly takes place, on Wall Street? If we are going to condemn the greed of the poor and lower middle class on Black Friday, we had better be sure to hold the wealthy to higher standards. And vice versa. Greed is greed is greed.

UPDATE: I have a slightly different view of this after hearing my pastor’s sermon today. The Gospel reading was the story of the Rich Young Man, who asked Jesus what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus finally said to him, “Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and follow me.” The man went away sad. Father started by talking about how brutal people were to each other on Black Friday, and how awful it is that we are so greedy that we lose control of ourselves. It occurred to me while listening to him that, as I said earlier, greed is greed is greed. The difference between those wafflemaker berserkers and a pinstriped JPMorgan banker whose life is controlled by his desires for money and possessions is opportunity and scale. Father pointed out that none of us in the congregation has yet fulfilled the conditions Jesus laid down to the Rich Young Man, so we all have repenting to do. It was a useful lesson.

I think liberals tend to valorize the poor, and to excuse their greed, when it manifests, by saying they don’t know any better, or they’re only aping the wealthy. Conservatives tend to valorize the rich, and excuse their greed, often by saying that the rich earned their money, so they have the “right” to do with it what they want. As if allowing your life to be controlled by your desires for material things was somehow excusable if you earned the money fair and square. If I think about my own spending, it’s embarrassing to think about how often I rationalize buying what I want to buy when I want to buy it.

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