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Avarice and Other Sins
Avarice, serving the “golden calf,” gives rise to many vices. Murder, looting, deception—quite often these are what lie at the foundation of wealth. It’s very difficult to earn a great estate through honest work. A man who is possessed by avarice is ready to do if not everything, then very many things for money.
We all wonder what happened to good, kind, talented movies and TV shows. Why are there so few gifted writers now who can arouse noble feelings in people? Why is there a continuous stream of sex, violence, aggression, and obscenity pouring out on us from these screens? One of the main reasons is that art has become commercial. Film studios, publishers, and TV channels want to recoup their investments with large profits. Thus, their products have to please a massive audience and arouse interest. If $40,000 were spent on a film, they need to get no less than $70,000 back. It’s very difficult to fill theaters by showing a truly good picture. Pavel Lungin’s film The Island, which tells about repentance and the rebirth of the human soul, was a pleasant and very rare exception.
In ancient Rome, the crowd shouted: “Bread and circuses!” What kind of spectacles did they have then? The theater, celebrating debauchery, brutal, bloody gladiator battles, and the torture of Christians in the Colosseum. Both in antiquity and now, the people’s beloved spectacles are the same.
Those who rule over human minds—writers, journalists, cinematographers—bear a tremendous responsibility. “How will our word resonate?” After all, what they film or write becomes the property of millions of people. And if a creative man does his work out of love of money or vanity, and his soul is filled with impurity, he can lead many people astray. And what’s most terrible is that if he’s truly talented, his destructive work continues even after his death.
Ivan Kyrlov has one not so famous but very instructive fable. In the story, after death, two men go to hell—a robber and an author. The first, of course, robbed people, while the second “infused a subtle poison into his works, had promoted atheism, and had preached immorality.”
And so, a large fire was kindled under the cauldron where the robber sat, while the flame barely burned under the author. Centuries passed, and the fire under the robber had long gone out, but “beneath the Author it grows hourly worse and worse.” Appealing to the rulers of hell, the author cried out that there is no justice. And there came the answer:
His crime is as nothing as compared with thine. Only as long as he lived did his cruelty and lawlessness render him hurtful. But thou—long ago have thy bones turned to dust, yet the sun never rises without bringing to light fresh evils of which thou art the cause. The poison of thy writings not only does not weaken, but, spreading abroad, it becomes more malignant as years roll by.
And then a terrible picture of the destructive effect of the author’s works is shown: children who rebelled against “marriage and the right of authority and law” and fell into unbelief—an entire country brought to ruin by rebellions and strife under the influence of his works, etc.
“How much evil have thy books yet to bring upon the world?”1
Today, another vice generated by avarice has become quite widespread—gambling addiction. People lose everything in casinos, at slot machines, sometimes to the point of ruin, sometimes to the point of suicide. The gambler is driven by two passions: greed and excitement, a thirst for risk and thrills. And the second passion, as a rule, prevails: The man can’t stop in time and falls into complete dependence upon it.
It’s been firmly established that gambling addiction, the propensity for games of chance, is the same addiction as drug addiction and alcoholism, and is very difficult to treat.
In the modern world, we see more than a few examples of human avarice on an especially large scale. One such example is construction in Moscow. A few years ago, the Moscow authorities announced that all dilapidated five-story buildings would be demolished by 2010, with big comfortable homes to be built in their place. Construction has begun. In the area where I live, in Izmailovo, the construction is especially booming, as the area is promising, green, with a park nearby. Three- and five-story buildings were broken down, and eighteen- and thirty-story buildings were erected in their place. But apparently no one thought about how the area simply wasn’t designed for such a huge population. The number of clinics, schools, kindergartens, public transport lines, and so on, remains the same. All the courtyards, all the streets by the new buildings are clogged with cars. On the streets along the buildings, vehicles are parked in two rows with a narrow lane between them where cars take turns going through. Traffic jams, congestion… You can’t get into the metro or get on ground transportation.
And that’s just one side of the problem. It’s very dangerous to live in thirty-story skyscrapers. What if there’s a fire on the thirtieth floor? We don’t have fire escapes. The housing question, which, we know, “spoiled Muscovites,”2 hasn’t been resolved, of course. People from demolished houses are being relocated to new buildings, and only a small percentage of housing is being given to those on the waiting lists. The rest of the housing stock is being sold for several thousand dollars per square meter. People wait in line for housing for many years, living in terrible conditions, and Moscow is becoming overpopulated. Wherein lies the problem? In avarice. Real estate in Moscow is a goldmine, worth billions of dollars. And life in the capital in general, due to terrible traffic, overpopulation, and poor ecology, has become impossible. And it’s all the fault of human avarice.
The Types of Avarice
Avarice takes two forms: wastefulness, squandering and, conversely, stinginess, greed. In the first case, a man who has wealth foolishly spends it on entertainment, satisfying his desires, and luxurious living. In the second case, he may live very poorly, denying himself everything but serving wealth as an idol—saving, collecting, and not sharing with anyone. Wasting away, like Koschei, like the Covetous Knight,3 over his gold.
Despite his great wealth, the famous American millionaire John Rockefeller lived like a poor man. He drove himself to complete nervous and physical exhaustion out of fear that his business would fail and he would lose some of his wealth. He was seriously ill and followed a strict diet because he couldn’t eat anything. But to be fair, I should say that in the second half of his life, Rockefeller radically revised his views and began giving large sums to charity.
The passion for hoarding, for miserliness, is a trait characteristic not only of the rich. People often ask about the “mercenariness” that we read about in the confession of sins in our evening prayers. Mercenariness is acquiring things we don’t need, when they’re as if covered over with moss from going unused in storage for so long. Even very poor people can suffer from this sin, buying and stashing dishes, clothes, and any other items, filling up all cupboards, shelves, and closets with them and often even forgetting what they put there.
The Fight Against Covetousness
How can we fight the passion of avarice? By cultivating the opposing virtues:
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mercy to the poor and needy
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caring not for earthly valuables but for acquiring spiritual gifts
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thinking not about mercantile, earthly issues, but about spiritual issues
Virtue doesn’t come by itself. A man who has a disposition towards avarice, miserliness, or greed, should compel himself, force himself to do deeds of mercy, to use his wealth for the good of his soul. For example, when we give alms, we shouldn’t just offer “to God” things that we don’t want or need, but rather make a genuine sacrifice—not a mere formality. Otherwise, sometimes we give a beggar some small change that’s just weighing down our pocket and still expect him to be grateful to us for it. He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully (2 Cor. 9:6).
By forcing ourselves to share, to give, to help others, we can deliver ourselves from avarice and greed. We’ll come to understand that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35); that we’ll have more joy and satisfaction from giving than hoarding and gathering valuables, which usually bring us very little benefit.
Many people wonder who we should alms to, since sometimes we have doubts about the honesty of the man asking—whether he’ll use our help for good. There’s more than one opinion from the Holy Fathers here. Some say you should give to everyone who asks, for the Lord Himself knows whether the man is asking sincerely or deceptively, and it will be no sin for us—to give as to Christ Himself. Others say we should give alms with great discernment. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course, in any case, it’s not a sin even if we give to a dishonest man. There have been “professional beggars” in all ages, including during the time of the Savior. Nevertheless, both the Lord and the Apostles gave alms to beggars. But if you’re not sure about someone, you can give him a small amount, and give more generous help to those who are definitely in need. There’s so much grief around us that there are probably such people among our friends and relatives. There’s good advice in the life of St. Philaret the Merciful, who was famous for his love of the poor and for his mercy. He had three boxes filled separately with gold, silver, and copper coins. The first was used as alms for those who were completely destitute, the second for those who had lost their means, and the third for those who hypocritically defrauded people of money.
