I was shocked to chance upon a major US financial news network happily using a market indicator called the ‘Greed and Fear’ index – with the commentator cheerfully explaining why the needle was shifting from greed to fear, and had just crossed over into ‘extreme fear’.
Greed and Fear are dominant actors on our world stage. In fact we’re so familiar with both, that we often barely recognise them any longer as abhorrent, malign characters, and hardly question their pervasive presence in every aspect of society. Greed and fear are woven into the fabric of life, from politics, to films, to our everyday experience.
People live in fear of the future (fear of global conflict, debt, immigration, deportation, unemployment, mental health, climate change, AI, or simply an inability to keep up). Climate anxiety has become a real and serious affliction, causing deep feelings of dread, helplessness, panic attacks. Mental health anxiety is at an all-time high amongst young people.
Meanwhile the forces of unchecked greed have reached a scale defying comprehension. The world’s first billionaire (J.D. Rockefeller) reached that milestone in 1916 exactly 110 years ago. Today we’ve seen Elon Musk become the first trillionaire – and several corporations are now valued in the multi-trillions, but such numbers are incomprehensible. There are well over 3,000 billionaires in the world today, and wealth disparity is vastly beyond anything in human history. The richest 0.1% control as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the adult population, and the top 1% alone owns 37% of world resources. Many corporations are wealthier than the entire African continent.
I remember a conversation with my father, when I questioned the attributes of capitalism as a Christian. My father (a very generous Christian who cared deeply for others), became surprisingly defensive, saying ‘I’d much rather live in a system based on greed than one based on fear’ (meaning communism). It was the height of the cold war, and I grudgingly agreed.
What does this have to do with theology? A lot! Christians too easily fall into the trap of equating money with success, and power with security. Governments control their populations though manipulating market forces (greed) or exerting power (fear). Jesus spoke radically against both such systems, and the Bible is clear. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’ and ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’. We have a lot of soul-searching to do.
