I, for one, was not surprised by the Prime Minister’s remark to his parliamentary colleagues about greed fuelling the race to develop a vaccination for Coronavirus. I well remember some years ago, when he and I were both on the Any Questions panel, he said to me in an audible aside:
‘Bishop, greed is good isn’t it because it makes us rich?’
I replied quickly to say something like you would expect me to say no, and the reason is that it makes a few people rich but it impoverishes many. Greed also causes some to fall into debt and even crime, because of the desire to ‘get rich quick’.
Greed makes us turn in on ourselves
The Judaeo-Christian tradition is uniformly negative about greed. In the book of Jeremiah we are told that everyone is greedy for unjust gain and deals falsely with their neighbour (Jer 6:13). The Ten Commandments, similarly and famously, tell us not to covet (that is, be greedy for) what is our neighbour’s (Exodus20:17).
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