Does Greed Make God Play Second Fiddle?

Mark Rego Monteiro For a piece of the Universe, he´s a little presumptuous..... I´m grateful to identify as an interfaith UU Quaker Christian, aka a Gandhian Christian. Humans have actually committed all manner of violence and enslavement. Buddha deserves special recognition as a highly successful teacher of personal spiritual effort around 500 BC/E, and that we can recognize that if we seek in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. It´s identifying the ideological materialism that´s tricky at this point, because humans tend to fall for all of that. That includes economic materialist profiteering businesspeople who have funded Christian fundamentalists, skewing that whole seen at one angle, for starters. Reply 12h Merle Lester greed has no boundaries that is what tips the human apple cart upside down so to speak... when greed comes into play "god": plays second fiddle Reply 9h Mark Rego Monteiro I agree with you that greed is an important temptation, when it is properly acknowledged. I was intrigued to find the Buddha articulating the threesome ignorance, greed, and hatred in at least one verse, and find it compelling. I also note how greed itself is not labeled in Jesus´ NT in the Gospels, if not the rest of it. Ignorance and hatred are also important labels, which were at least developed as the monastic spiritual practitioners kicked in, with Evagrius´ eight vices, then Gregory´s Seven Deadly Sins (quick look-up: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth). However, I´d be careful to situate greed appropriately by not reifying it, but reclaiming it and situating it in people. "Greed in people," for one. Also, I´d be clear that "greed coming into play" is very crucially contextual. Other people have their roles to play, one way or another. Whether God plays "second fiddle" is part of that context. Thus, I have valued not for profit activist groups for the public interest since I learned about them as an early interfaith spiritual seeker, the PIRGs started by Ralph Nader, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace first of all. My dad had identified "multinationals" as the target of his own anger. As I settled into work in social services in a big city, I quickly identified health food stores, and green product stores, as exceptionally meaningful business enterprises. Step by step, later as an interfaith UU Christian with Christian Science leading my entry with its healing and effective theism, I traced University education and social movements in my masters work. The anti-slavery movement specifically began around the 1780s, sparked by Quaker-Friends protesting, sparking University activity, with an essay contest spurring graduating divinity student T Clarkson to join the Quakers as a pioneering grassroots movement leader. The story actually begins, then, with the founding of the Quaker-Friends, with the remarkable George Fox having little formal education somewhere north of London, and being cultivated for his spiritual brilliance. He stopped bowing to aristocrats, valued individuals and women, and protested injustice, based around simplified worship in meditative silent waiting on the Inner Light of Christ. In modern times, I referred to ideological materialism, which more specifically might be developed as the manipulation by profiteering businesspeople of University-based and related technological developments to their greed, and applying their economic power and influence in all possible ways. I got a book Subliminal Seduction in high school, and found my dad´s book by Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders. Noam Chomsky et al wrote Manufacturing Consent, and A Curtis directed the doc Century of the Self, while Michael Moore began his film career with Roger and Me progressing to Capitalism and Invade Next? "God" only plays a reduced or inappropriate role according to people´s orientation. As I noticed people´s relative indifference and complancency to efforts like Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Oxfam, I noticed that organic and Fair Trade labeling converged with health food stores and food co-op stores in their growth. Consumer and economic activism is a vigorous participatory lifestyle choice. In New York City there is a Yoga school built with its own health food store, which is a powerful association. Equal Exchange organic and Fair Trade foods itself founded an Interfaith Partner Network. For related reasons, the UN can be analyzed as the fruit of FD Roosevelt´s Social Gospel influences in high school and as an adult. FDR can be recognized for his exceptional astuteness all along in pro-social policies, leading WWII preparations and execution, and envisioning UN human rights. In a nutshell, since ideological greed has been so damaging and devious, it is time for spiritual-religious people to up their game with all the resources that are now at their disposal. That´s how pro-active constructive action is developed, and empowered. The term "empowered," not least of all, was only innovated in teh 1970s, to also recognize historical contexts.