We are witnessing the monstrous effects of the deadly sin of greed (or avarice) today in our nation. Writing on this sin, Phyllis Tickle says greed is the most social and most political of the seven deadly sins.
Here are some recent figures and facts that prove her point:
- From 1975 to 2018, $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
- In 1982, there were 23 billionaires in the United States. In 1996, there were 132 billionaires. Today, there are 1,135 billionaires.
- Since President Donald Trump’s first term in office in 2016, America has seen the largest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the richest Americans in our history — a trend amplified in Trump’s second term. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the “One Big Beautiful Bill” of 2025 have accelerated that upward transfer of wealth, and as of now those tax cuts for the rich have been made permanent. Moreover, these tax cuts for the super wealthy are being subsidized by draconian cuts to programs for the sick, poor and hungry of our nation.
Stephen Shoemaker
Phyllis Tickle writes that the Latin translation of Paul’s warning, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” became an acrostic the early church used to mock the greed of the Roman Empire. The name for the empire’s capital city, ROMA, became: Radix (the root), Omnium (of all), Malorum (evil), Avarice (is avarice).
She suggests the same sort of acrostic for modern America: The United States of Avarice.
How did we get here? In 2012, in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unlimited political spending in elections was protected as a form of free speech. The court’s decision has resulted in billions of dollars put into the coffers of candidates for political office, contributions that can legally be hidden from the public.
In the 2024 election, $1.4 billion was spent on political advertising, much of it coming from undisclosed sources. The control of the political process by the super-rich led former President Jimmy Carter to say a few years ago that America has become “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
One could say greed has been driving the worst parts of our nation’s history from the beginning. It has been widely said that the original sin of America was slavery, but two esteemed Black female writers, Pulitzer Prize-winning Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste, and Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, in her novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, say greed was the original sin.
Wilkerson writes: “Caste is the infrastructure of our division. Slavery became the foundation of a hierarchy built on greed, which mutated to the cracks we see today.” And Jeffers writes in her novel: “For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved.”
“A wide swath of American Christianity has supported the politics and political leaders who have made the sin of greed a political virtue.”
What is most alarming today is that a wide swath of American Christianity has supported the politics and political leaders who have made the sin of greed a political virtue. These Christians have seen wealth as a sure sign of God’s blessing and have accorded the rich an aura of being smarter and better than most. Trump won the votes of 81% of evangelicals in his first election in part because of such a belief about wealth and the wealthy.
The Prosperity Gospel has captured significant parts of American Christianity, and metastasized greed has taken over our politics. How strange that followers of Jesus would fall for the greed manifest in our culture and politics. Jesus was in consistent warning mode about the dangers of wealth. Let us count (some of) the ways:
- Matthew 6:24 — “You cannot serve God and money.”
- Luke 6:20 and 25 — “Blessed are you poor. … Woe to you that are rich.”
- Luke 12:15 — “Take heed and beware of all covetousness; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions.”
- In Luke 12: 13-21, Jesus told a parable to two brothers squabbling over their inheritance. The land of a rich man had a bountiful harvest. What did he do? He did not help serve the needs of the poor but instead built bigger barns. The climax of the parable? God said, “You fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you prepared, whose shall those be?” And Jesus provides the clincher: “So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
- In Luke 18:18-23, Jesus met the one we call the rich young ruler. He came to Jesus asking how he might inherit eternal life. He had followed all the commandments, but Jesus said: “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” We know how it ended: “But when he heard this he became sad for he was very rich.”
- We remember Paul’s words again from 1 Timothy 6:10, a virtual commentary on this passage: “For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some wandered away from faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.”
As the rich young ruler went sadly away, Jesus said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Or as we might paraphrase today: For it is easier for a Mercedes to get through the revolving doors of First National Bank than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God.
How strange that followers of Jesus today live as if Jesus never said such things. It is one mark of the apostasy of the church in our times. The church has indeed wandered away from faith.
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.
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