In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges describes the city of Las Vegas as a “spectacle.” It is a place designed to cater to the fantasies of its visitors. It amuses, or perhaps confuses, those seeking to be immersed in an illusion filled with (false) promise and hope.
Those who dismiss Vegas as a place of perversion to be avoided may be missing a crucial point: Vegas is not an anomaly. It is the logical progression of a system built to feed insatiable human desire.
As Hedges notes, “Las Vegas strips away the thick moral pretension and hypocrisy of consumer society to reveal its essence. The commodification of human beings, the heart of consumer society, is garishly celebrated in Las Vegas. Here there is no past, no history, no sense of continuity, and no real community.”
Vegas and the Virtual World
While Vegas is an illusion of sorts, it is also bluntly honest. Whatever hope those who sit down at a blackjack table might have of winning, given time, losing is virtually inevitable. Thus, the truism — “the house always wins.”
As such, journalist Marc Cooper notes, “All the pretense, all the sentimentality, the euphemisms, the hypocrisies, the come-ons, loss leaders, warranties and guarantees, all the fairy tales are out the window. You’re out of money? OK, good — now get lost.”
The digital world we carry around in our pockets and the media it displays, in many ways, are the antithesis of Vegas. They are more subtle and seemingly more benevolent as they influence our behaviors and capture our attention.
Our desires become raw materials sustaining the digital economy. In a consumer-based economy fueled by new information technologies, our unchecked, misdirected desires make us fit to serve as human batteries energizing an economy that demands continual growth.
As industries compete for our attention, even the sectors we trust to provide honest, well-researched, and nuanced accounts of reality have adjusted their tactics to ensure their survival.
Philosopher Ryan Holiday argues we can no longer accept the “naïve belief” that we will hear about the most important news because “…it’s mostly the least important news that will find you. It’s the extreme stuff that cuts through the noise. It’s the boring information, the secret stuff that people don’t want you to know, that you’ll miss. That’s the stuff you have to subscribe to, that you pay for, that you have to chase.”
What we see (what we are shown) is not all there is, yet we tend to live as if it is.
Greed in the Information Age
When decisions about what to say and when to say it are conditioned less by slow, deep, Spirit-led discernment than on what will drive page views, greed rules the system.
When we consume such messages and, through our likes, shares, views, and downloads, request more of the same, greed becomes a natural logic.
They supply because we consume, and we consume because they supply. There is no particular end toward that which we are aiming for because “accumulating more” means we never have enough.
But what are we greedy for? It seems we are greedy for the security that comes from stories that confirm our beliefs, reduce or eliminate ambiguity, and remind us that there are people out there who are far worse than we are.
We are greedy for information that reinforces our experience, allows us to go about our day-to-day activities, and confirms our preferred understanding of God. Media, even some Christian media, can form us into the image of something other than Christ.
Christians seem willing to accept such an assertion when it comes to pornography, violence, or other such vulgarities, yet we don’t often consider the idea that other forms of media are capable of distorting reality and cultivating misdirected desires.
If we become greedy for such media, we may find that we have engaged in a sort of idolatry in which the god presented in the media becomes “real” while the real God is increasingly lost in the noise.
To put it differently, greed does not have to involve an increase in material goods. It can also involve the accumulation of information that allow us to live comfortably.
As theologian Jürgen Moltmann notes, while wanting to be like God is only one side of sin, “The other side of such pride is hopelessness, resignation, inertia, and melancholy…Temptation then consists not so much in the titanic desire to be as God but in weakness, timidity, weariness, not wanting to be what God requires of us.”
Greed Is Our Problem
We are the problem. In Thinking Christian, I suggest, “When we have not offered a faithful digital presence, it is, in part, because we did not have a good idea of what it meant to offer a faithful ‘analog’ presence.”
We have always had a problem with greed. We seem to want the wrong things for the wrong reasons, thereby losing any reasonable grip on what it means to choose God over greed.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that exaggerated spectacles like Vegas and the gossip-column-framed-as-investigative-journalism have something in common: they wouldn’t exist without us.
Our desires begin to form us spiritually through economic systems in which we are, to one degree or another, willing participants. Greed often results in the accumulation of wealth. The fact that greed often results in wealth, however, should not blind us to other objects of greed.
Greed, we might say, is about the incessant pursuit of something deemed so valuable that obtaining it pushes out gratitude and contentment. We no longer “seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness” but set it aside to chase what has become the object of our misdirected desires.
Our desire to be fulfilled by something other than God, overreach God-given boundaries in pursuit of our own aims, and set agendas for God that relegate him to second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) position reflect the sort of self-centeredness that allows greed to flourish.
While Paul may rejoice at the spread of the gospel even when it is motivated by selfish ambition (Philippians 1:15-18), he isn’t endorsing selfish ambition.
Greed is rooted in our unwillingness to take direction from our Creator so that as we identify the objects of our desire, we give ourselves over to reflect those objects rather than God’s glory.
Arguably, even our most legitimate desires, when left unchecked and redirected by God, can limit our ability to love God and neighbor.
If we (individually or collectively) allow our desire for virtues, such as truth, justice, accountability, holiness, unity, or love, to overshadow God, we offer a false picture of Him to the world.
In our portrayal of God, He begins to look more like us. We suggest that God conforms to our desires and serves our purposes.
Contentment Against Greed
Greed lies in the wanting rather than in the getting. In connecting greed and idolatry, Paul points to the underlying dynamic by which greed orients our way of being in the world.
Our unbridled desire for some sort of coherent understanding of the world, some sense of security apart from God, cultivates greed.
When we forget that there is nothing apart from God that will ultimately bring security and satisfaction, we subject ourselves to an endless, hopeless life of wanting.
When greed becomes our way of being in the world, we forget that when we serve the God of the scriptures, we can learn to be content. We have the hope that God will make all things new and the ability to participate with Him in whatever way He requires.
We have the confidence to submit our misdirected desires to the Lord, knowing that he will teach us “to be content…in any and every circumstance” (Philippians 4:11-12). Greed, as insatiable as it may be, is insufficient. Our greed is both misguided and severely limited.
After all, if we are unable to comprehend the depths of all that God desires to do in and among us (Ephesians 3:20), how could our desires ever capture anything close to God’s fathomless generosity?
Greed is not easy to identify. It sneaks up on us, yet greed is avoidable if we are willing to accept all God has given as all that we need.
Contentment is the antidote to greed, and that contentment is rooted in a right understanding of God. God crowds out greed. When we embrace God, we have no need to want for anything more than more of Him.
For further reading:
What Is Greed? Definition and Bible Verses about Greed
Does God Really Love a Cheerful Giver?
Does the Bible Say 'You Can't Outgive God'?
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