Greed vs. Charity

Greed: An insatiable desire to possess or acquire something to an amount inordinately beyond what one needs or deserves.

Charity: An act of good will or affection; the quality of being kind or lenient in judging others.

Greed, along with lust and gluttony, are sins of excess. I like the word "insatiable." It means a desire that can never be satisfied. I also like "inordinately," which implies desire without restraint or moderation. So throw out all of the 5 dollar words and we're left with a character defect that condemns us to the relentless pursuit of far more than we can ever use, and no satisfaction with what we acquire. No matter how much we get it's never enough.



Greed is desire that will never be fulfilled. It is a desire for so much of whatever we are trying to get that the whole concept is bent out of all recognizable shape. We talk about this all the time in The Fellowship when we discuss our disease. We talk about the holes in our being that can never be filled, no matter how much alcohol or drugs or sex or stuff we try to jam in.

And then there's sweet useless incompetent charity. I used to crush charity with the leather jackboot of alcoholism when I was drinking, and then spat on its prone figure. I couldn't be bothered with acts of good will when I was furiously shoveling things into yawning holes. I sought out charitable people, though, because I could usually get something from them. I thought I was bamboozling them; it never occurred to me that they were doing nice things because they wanted to, because it made them feel good.



Charity sounds like a prim schoolmarm from Tombstone, Arizona, in a sunbonnet. Charity would not do well against Greed in the Texas Death Match.