Letter - Is greed immoral?

To the editor:

I recently ran into an old friend of mine who, unlike myself, still involves himself in the evangelical Christian movement. I hadn’t seen him since the presidential election and he saw my Obama bumper sticker.

This time he hadn’t heard that there’s not a dime of abortion funding in the health care law (note that I didn’t use the word “bill”) and launched into a debate about legislating morality. He thinks that Christians should attempt this. I, being a Christian and yet in the lonely and difficult position of not wanting to be associated with 99.99 percent of them, think not.

I pointed out that although the Jews lived in a multicultural area and in close proximity to child sacrificers, there is no record of them ever attempting to stop them or even dissuade them. In other words, they let sinners sin, so long as they didn’t belong to their group. When he persisted to assert that Christians should legislate morality through the pursuit of political power, I pointed out to him that Jesus said that our kingdom was not of this world, and that if you are persecuted in one city they should flee to the next.

I then asked him a question that brings me to the point of this whole letter: Is greed immoral? “Yes!” he enthusiastically responded.

Why, I asked then, don’t Christians believe in legislating the morality that would deal with that sin? After all, Jesus addressed it more than any other single subject. He would preach, not legislate, against greed. Then he would turn around and hand out lots of entitlements like food stamps and free health care, like he did every time he incessantly fed and healed people.

Judd Hoff

Glenwood, MN

Tags: opinion, letters, hoff