I've seen it play out with friends and relatives many times. Put a bit of money in someone's pocket and it burns a hole right through their heart. Wealth creates greed. Poverty nurtures compassion.
There are so many things wrong here that I don't know where to start. Wealth may empower greed, but greed's always there. The projects are the most compassionate places you know? Pretty compassionate in those homeless shelters you volunteer at? All those rich guys locked up at the place you do your prison ministry?
That has never been my observations among the many people I have known in my lifetime. Greed is an abheration of the human spirit, and like most evil is a learned trait. It only occurs after the person has made a conscious decision to abandon their ethics in the pursuit of power. Yes, the most compassionate people I have known have always lived modestly. I have known enough people living on the street and enough people living in mansions to abhor what wealth does to most people.
Must have been a slow burn. His first success as a playwrite was in the 70s and then he scored a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry, Glen Ross in 1984. He's written countless plays and movies since then.
Good grief, where do you get this stuff? Everybody would love to be rich, and most of them are not evil. Everybody wants to make more money, get a better deal on a house, win the lottery, etc., etc. Furthermore, some of the most generous people in the world are the people who have the most money. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have agreed to pass on at least half of their fortunes to charitable causes all over the world.
??? The most crime-ridden areas in America are in the poor inner cities. What poverty seems to nurture more than anything--at least in places like Detroit and East LA--is violence, murder, rape, and thievery.
mark 6 : 24 - no man can serve two masters. for you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. you cannot serve both god and money
mathew 19 : 23-24 - Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
So, according to our Lord and Savior, the most majestic Barack Hussein Obama, anyone who makes over $250K doesn't get into Heaven?
im not sure god will use the guidelines set forth by obama, but he just might luke 6:30 - Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
No, they don't. I know scads of people who really don't, including myself. A comfortable living is what normal people seek. People who devote their lives to amassing billions of dollars are mentally deranged. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett leaving half of their hoard is their way of buying good PR, nothing more. They will still have the other half, which if set up in a trust fund the interest alone could easily support every heir they have and all their heirs down the line into eternity. People die all day, every day, simply because they lack money for medicine, or food, while the Kings of Avarice sit on their thrones of gold. Noun 1. avarice - reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins) avaritia, greed, rapacity, covetousness deadly sin, mortal sin - an unpardonable sin entailing a total loss of grace; "theologians list seven mortal sins" 2. avarice - extreme greed for material wealth avariciousness, cupidity, covetousness greed - excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves
Being an atheist the threat of hellfire falls on deaf ears. I'm just not greedy because I was raised by nice people.
