Need & Greed what's the difference? | ChristianToday Australia

If Mother Theresa was right that poverty was not created by God but by you and I, because we haven't figured out how to love. Then wow, we need to understand a lot more about love, especially if it's the mitigating factor of poverty alleviation.

I've been suspecting lately one of the blocks to the love Mother Theresa is talking about is greed. Not necessarily explicit greed but rather a greed that is expressed passively and is embedded in our "need" for "security". Our news is flooded with inconceivable figures, trillions of dollars being lost in a matter of days. Naturally therefore panic sets in that the world is falling apart. But for who? For two thirds of the world population, the world has never been a secure place, and whose life is as unpredictable as ever. Their futures cannot be any more uncertain. Yet our news screens remain so silent. That is until the other one third's world's security is threatened. News headlines saying our basic needs are in danger of not being met. What do they mean by basic needs? Our fresh, clean drinking water? Our access to fresh foods? The probability of some form of shelter for our family or do they mean our needs like our take away nights, big screen TVs, essential technologies, de'cafe flat whites and access to extraordinary amounts of stockpiled money so we can stop working as early as possible and "live the life"? I wonder, do they actually mean our basic greeds?

I find it so hard to work out what I am supposed to enjoy about the first world life I am blessed with and what I should "shed" so as not to find myself ever defined as a "fat cow of Bashan" (Amos 4). I remember Gandhi's thought that there is enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed. To sound very clichÃ© I know love is the answer to this conundrum, but I suspect not the love of this world. Rather the love spoken of in 1 John 3:16 "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." I suspect Mother Theresa is right if she is referring to this love, greed has no power or place in a love that seeks the well being of another to the point of sacrifice that was shown by Christ.

Though I imagine our news will be flooded by analysis and reporting on this latest financial crisis, for those in Africa they remain consumed by getting through another day without basic needs.

Thanks for reading; we would love to hear stories of how you love the world in a 1 John 3:16 kind of way.

African Enterprise