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Greed, Desire and Theology

Article in The Ecumenical Review October 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-6623.2011.00119.x

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Greed, Desire and Theology

Jung Mo Sung
Dr Jung Mo Sung is professor of Religion at So Paulo Methodist University.
A Roman Catholic, born in Korea, he lives in Brazil.
This article aims to contribute to discussion of the greed line from a theological
viewpoint by analyzing the foundational myth of capitalist modernity, the modern
misappropriation of the notion of the incarnation of God, which has given rise to the
idea that human beings have no limits and has contributed to their spirituality of
consumption. I believe that such a critique is a preliminary step in our progress toward
proposing the establishment of a greed line or wealth line as we try to overcome poverty
and social injustice.

Basic Needs versus the Desire for More

In economic and social discussion we meet the idea of a poverty line but not of a greed
line. The exact quantitative definition of the poverty line can vary from one international organization or from one country to another, but the basic idea has won international acceptance: the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an
adequate standard of living in a given country. In contrast, as well as lacking a
definition, the very idea of a greed line does not make sense for modern economic and
social theories. For the modern world, greed, unlike poverty, is not an economic or
social concept, but rather a moral concept with negative connotations, used mostly by
faith communities.
In the financial crisis of recent years, the idea of greed has again been used to criticize
what could be seen as a moral failing on the part of bankers, top executives and
speculators, but not as an economic or social concept. The proposal by the World
Council of Churches to work on the concept of a greed line as part of the struggle to
overcome poverty and injustice on a world scale goes against one of the basic cornerstones of modern culture and the current capitalist system. To reach a better understanding of this topic, we need to understand why the idea of a greed line is absent in
the modern world. To do this, we must first look at the relationship between the poverty
line and a greed line.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-6623.2011.00119.x
Copyright (2011) World Council of Churches. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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The poverty line refers to a minimum level of satisfaction of the basic needs of an
individual or social group. It is thus a line that lies towards the bottom of the scale.
The idea of basic needs refers to those goods and services that, as a whole, are
necessary for people to maintain a dignified standard of living. It thus consists of a
limited number of goods. It is possible to locate individuals as being below or above
the poverty line to have, or not to have, their basic needs met. This is a line that
people need to rise above; efforts must be made so that everyone is located above the
poverty line.
Greed, on the other hand, has no direct relationship with the meeting of basic needs but
rather with the desire to have more. Konrad Raiser, for example, refers to greed as the
desire to have more than ones legitimate share of goods, and adds that greed, from the
New Testament viewpoint, falls under strong condemnation.1
There is no limit to desire, and thus, unlike basic needs, desire is not related to the
metabolism of the human body. The human species is the only species with the capacity
to think and desire beyond what is necessary, beyond what is given ad innitum! An
example of this capacity is our awareness of death and our desire for immortality.
Another is our desire to be united, to become one, with God. There is thus no limit to
our desires. Desire is constantly wanting to be, or to have, more.
Because individuals always want more, and also because material and immaterial
resources are limited and thus always scarce compared with peoples desires, however
much production increases conflict is inevitable. That is why civilizations have always
had to struggle with this conflict, which is basic to all societies.
Konrad Raiser explains, This judgment, of course, does not concern the natural
human striving to improve ones condition, as long as it does not deprive others of
their legitimate share. That statement offers one sort of solution. We have a general
principle: everyone has a right to better his or her standard of living, provided that
doing so does not deprive others of their due share. In practice, this approach implies
placing limits on peoples desire to improve their standard of living. That is because
our efforts to better our standard of living are unlimited, as there is always some
improvement to aim for. Here we are dealing not with raising people above the
poverty line and meeting their needs, but with their desire for many things beyond
their actual needs. Since resources are limited, the proposed concrete solution is to
1

Konrad Raiser, Theological Considerations regarding a Wealth/Greed line, a paper prepared for a consultation in Geneva,
7 December 2009. See his article based on that paper in this issue of Ecumenical Review.

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place limits on peoples desires for the sake of the others right to have their basic
needs met.
We know that, even in pre-modern societies, this precept was not satisfactorily put into
effect. It was, however, at least accepted as a religious and moral value. Today, though,
placing limits on what people desire the establishment of a greed line has no
meaning and goes against the prevailing culture. That is because with the advent of
modernity, a profound change has taken place.
A World without Limits?
Among the new features of the modern world, I wish to emphasize here the disappearance of the idea of limits and the appearance of a new concept of what it is to be
human. The limits presuppose an agent, or subject, who has limits. There are no such
things as limits in themselves, but rather agents or subjects who, as they develop and act,
come up against limits and make efforts to surmount them. Some limits are surmounted
in the lives of individuals, while others are surmounted not by individuals but by the
human species in the evolution of culture or technologies. The question that then arises
is this: Are there limits that cannot be surmounted by individuals or by humankind? In
other words, are there limits that are an integral part of the human condition? And, if
so, what lies beyond those limits?
In pre-modern societies, people were aware of the limits to the human condition that
could not be overcome. Those limits were part of peoples awareness of what it was to
be human. Lying beyond those limits there was God, or the gods. Thus transcendence
was vertical. In other words, there was an awareness of limits. What lay beyond them,
what was transcendental, did not lie ahead of people in a future that could be attained by
human progress, but rather above people in the realm of the divine. Religions were ways
of dealing with this vertical transcendence, and thereby of dealing with human conflicts.
In a world like that, infinite desire in the form of limitless greed was viewed as a moral
evil. Thus, the establishment of a greed line would have been perfectly understandable
and acceptable, even though it might have been annoying to the governing lites!
With the modern world, however, there arises a new concept of what it is to be human:
a human can develop limitlessly. Beginning with the Renaissance, religious narratives,
particularly those in the New Testament, in a process of the secularization of myth,
begin to become moral parables. There thus cease to be two qualitatively different
worlds, heaven and earth, the divine world and the human world, with a border, a limit,
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separating them. Instead, they become one homogeneous world. The basic difference
between God and humankind no longer exists.
For Franz Hinkelammert,2 the origin of this situation is the notion of the incarnation
of God. God became human and thus humans can, and should, become gods. For
Hinkelammert, this is the foundational myth of the modern West, underlying all other
myths. Agnes Heller, following the same line, states that The humanization of myth is
at the same time divinization of humankind. As God becomes human, humans also are
divinized.3 The Renaissance idea of the divinity of humankind implies, firstly, a
process of divinization. Humans are not born gods, but become gods.4 With this view,
we see a reversal in the meaning of hubris. In the ancient world, the attempt by humans
to surmount human limits, or hubris, was regarded as a transgression, while in the
modern world it is regarded as a virtue, since one recognizes no limits to human
development.
Out of this radical religious and cultural change we are beginning to see expressions
such as unlimited growth and I want, therefore I can as normal, along with the idea
that we have the right to have all our (infinite) desires met. To that end, it is seen to be
enough to develop or perfect human endeavours by means of technology.
Francis Fukuyama sums up the promise of capitalist modernity in this way:
Technology makes unlimited wealth accumulation a possibility, and thereby the satisfaction of an
ever increasing range of human desires. This process creates a uniform homogenization of all
human societies, irrespective of their historical origins or their cultural heritage. All countries in this
process of economic modernization inevitably have a tendency to become similar. Nationally, they
must become unified on the basis of a centralized state, become urban societies, and replace the
traditional forms of social organization, such as tribe, sect or family, by forms that are economically
rational, based on function and efficiency and ensuring universal education of its citizens. Global
markets and the spread of a universal consumer culture create increasingly close links between these
societies. Moreover, the logic of modern natural science seems to dictate a universal evolution
towards capitalism.5

Fukayama no longer upholds the thesis of the end of history, but this good news
of capitalist globalization continues to be strong. The good news consists in affirming
2

Franz Hinkelammert, Hacia una crtica de la razn mtica. El laberinto de la modernidad, Drada, Mexico, 2008.

Agnes Heller, O homen do renascimento, Ed. Presena, Lisbon, 1982, p. 67.

Ibid, p. 12.

Francis Fukuyama, O m da historia e o ltimo homen, Rocco, Rio de Janeiro, 1992, p. 15.

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that the way has been found to satisfy all human desires, present or future, and achieve
unlimited wealth accumulation. This unlimited accumulation is reckoned to be a
possibility through technological development, which reaches its maximum efficiency
by reason of capitalist economics, disseminated worldwide by the global market and the
spread of a universal consumerist culture.
Global capitalism promises that the oldest of all human dreams will come true: all
desires will be satisfied! The way to this satisfaction will be through unlimited wealth
accumulation. If that is regarded as the truth, what does it mean to draw up a greed line
or a wealth line? Does it mean imposing a limit, a restriction, on the possibility of all the
desires of the whole of humankind being realized? That is why a greed line makes no
sense in the prevailing culture of todays world. Moreover, it is an idea that enters into
conflict with the real world. Such a concept appears to suppress the possibility of
human desires being realized.
The proposal for a greed line or a wealth line is that a limit be set for two types of
wealth: the unlimited wealth accumulation that is the engine of the capitalist market
system (the structural dimension, or the second order), and the quest for all consumers desires to be realized (the subjective dimension). This approach goes against the
fundamental pillar upon which the modern world rests: the denial of transcendence,
the denial of human limitations and of the quest for the divinization of humans and the
building of heaven on earth, whether in the form of capitalisms perfect market, or
Marxisms reign of freedom, or the building of the kingdom of God in its fullness
within history.
Creating the Desire for More
In the 19th century, with the expansion and strengthening of the capitalist market
system, there arose what Karl Polanyi has called the economy of the self-regulating
market.6 For Polanyi, it is an economy governed by market prices and by market
prices alone.7 It is a system that attempts to organize the whole of economic life
without any external intervention, whether by the state or by civil society, such as an
economic system that admits no limitation by external agents or institutions on the
market for the sake of other values, other than those based on the efficiency of the free
market. In other words, principles such as social justice or social or environmental

See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Beacon Press, Boston, 2001.

Ibid.

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sustainability may not be invoked to place limits on the dynamics of the economy. The
market must be totally free! The rules regulating the economy can originate only in the
economy itself.
This thesis, which was enthusiastically taken up again in the 1980s in neo-liberalism, still
continues to be the cornerstone of the global capitalist market system. Even when
today one speaks of the need to care for the environment, the main argument the
market accepts is the one that calculates economic efficiency, which is no longer
thought of in the short term, but rather in the long term.
Thus, for todays prevailing economic system and theory, no obstacles may be placed in
the way of maximum wealth accumulation that do not originate in the rationale of the
economy itself. In other words, no limitations may be placed on the dynamism of the
market.
Conjointly with the spread of the capitalist market and its economic theories, we have
had the spread of the consumer culture and consumer society worldwide.
The consumer society constructed this field of symbols and implanted it at the centre of marketplace activity, causing a profound transformation in social life. The nature of this transformation [is]
the change in the social function of goods from being primarily satisfiers of wants to being primarily
communicators of meanings . . . Three forces are largely responsible: (1) the recognition of consumption as a legitimate sphere for individual self-realization; (2) the discovery by marketers and
advertisers that the personal or psychological and interpersonal (or social) domains of the consumer,
rather than the characteristics of goods, were the vital core of merchandising; (3) the revolutions in
communications and mass media technologies that made possible rapid evolution of advertising
formats, including the special significance of visual or iconic imagery.8

Jean-Marie Dru, the chief executive officer of TBWA, a global advertising agency,
states,
A brand shouldnt stop at being a name for a product people buy. Rather, it should be a point of
reference, carrying with it an added psychological value, a value that makes the consumer say to
himself, Deep down, Im happy I bought this. Therefore the product must be given more meaning
and perspective through the work done on the brand. Apple helps me fulfil dreams, Oil of Olay
relieves my anxiety, Nike pushes me to give it my all, Levis for women celebrates womanhood, Keds
brings me back to my childhood, and Pepsi makes me a part of new generations. All these names
have a certain density or thickness. They are icons. Advertising has endowed them with spirit and

Sut Jhally, William Leiss and Stephen Kline, Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products and Images of Well-Being, 2nd
edition, revised and enlarged, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, pp. 28586.

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lan, and secured them a place in the social context. They have perspective, and therefore have gone
beyond the limits of the marketplace. Their competitors, by contrast, lack meaning and depth.9

I have given one quotation from experts on consumer culture and one from someone
who uses market values to demonstrate that there is more underlying the debate on the
greed line than simply whether basic needs are being met or merely the question of
material issues. Today the economy the pursuit of both unlimited wealth accumulation and unlimited consumption is related to deeper questions, spiritual questions.
This quest has to do with the deepest meaning of life and the search for personal
fulfilment and happiness.
There is a sentence in that quotation from Jean-Marie Dru that merits closer examination: A value that makes the consumer say to himself, Deep down, Im happy I bought
this. Why does happiness come from the purchase of a particular product, of this
item and not any other? This happiness does not consist in the act of purchasing itself
but in the purchasing of this item. And what makes this particular product possess this
value capable of making the consumer happy? The value does not lie in the object itself,
but in the fact that this object is desired by persons who are reckoned to be models of
what a person should be.
Human beings are born with the potential of becoming human, but we do not exactly
know what being human consists of, nor how to become it. Thus we hold before us
someone whom the family, religion or society (and today, especially, the media) presents
to us as a model of a human being, as a person who has this quality of being human that
we desire. One of the basic features of cultural dominance is the ability to impose its
vision of what being human is, and make its model adopted by the whole world as the
model of what it means to human. An example is impoverished young people in the
third world who imitate the models of the globalized human person and wish to buy
Nike gear, iPods, iPhones and so on. By possessing those symbols of what it is to be
human, they hope to feel more human.
Because individuals come to desire the same products in pursuit of being human, there
inevitably arises rivalry and conflict. Why? First, because these goods are always scarce
compared with the number of individuals desiring them. If the goods were not in
scarce supply, they would not be objects of desire. Second, because, if everyone else
possesses the same thing as I have, that product loses its quality of being special.
9

Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption: Overturning Conventions and Shaking Up the Marketplace, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1996,
pp. 7475.

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Comparing what I have with what others have is the key to this logic. That is why it
never ends. There is not a definite goal to be reached in order to achieve happiness or
personal fulfilment. The arrival point is always elusive, disappearing into an infinite
distance, because the numberless models are always wanting new things that the market
offers.
Similarly, Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, and Luis Rayo, in a study on
efficiency and happiness, state that The level of happiness that an individual derives
from his economic success is usually affected by the success of his peers (i.e. peer
comparisons) and the individual is mainly concerned not with his absolute level of
success, but rather with the difference between his success and a benchmark that
changes over time.10
However, our being human does not lie in brands or in economic success, and thus it
is inevitable that people feel frustrated. Meanwhile, because society today declares that
there is no alternative, most people continue in this endless pursuit, believing that by
consuming more or achieving greater economic success measured by their level of
wealth accumulation and their capacity to consume they will finally achieve happiness
and complete self-fulfilment. In this spirituality of consumption, what we are calling
greed is regarded as perseverance in the pursuit of complete self-fulfilment.
Exposing the Lie That Leads to Greed
Confronted with a world such as this, how can theology and the Christian churches
contribute to exposing this great lie? I wish to present three suggestions.
Accepting our human limitations
I believe that an initial contribution concerns the foundational narrative of the West:
the incarnation of God. In this Christian concept, God became a human being, and
thus human beings can become divine. But the God whom human beings need to
imitate or to become is the God who became human. Thus, becoming like God does
not consist in surmounting the human condition, but does consist in becoming human.
In other words, for Christianity, to become godlike is to become truly human to
become reconciled to the constraints inherent in the human condition. It is the recognition of this insuperable limit that leads Christianity to state that salvation (the
10

Luis Rayo and Gary Becker, Evolutionary Efficiency and Happiness, http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/
RayoBeckerLSE1.pdf [accessed 18 July 2011].

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complete fulfilment of the deepest human desires) can happen only by a free act of
Gods grace.
We can thus escape from the transcendental illusion of attempting to attain the
infinite by our own human actions, which are always finite. That illusion is much more
than a mere cognitive illusion, in that it leads to a dehumanizing and perverse spirituality
(the spirituality of consumption) and to idolatry, the demand that human lives be
sacrificed.
It is important to stress here that this refusal to accept human limitations has
occurred not only within capitalism but in other areas as well. The illusion that it is
possible to achieve perfection, or the infinite, by human action (what Hegel called
bad infinity and Franz Hinkelammert calls transcendental illusion) is present
among Marxists, as well as among Christian theologians and theologians of other
religions, who believe it to be possible to build a world without conflict a world of
complete harmony, between human beings and between human beings and nature.
Every time we state, consciously or unconsciously, that it is possible for us to build
a world of complete harmony and justice, without any conflict or contradictions, we
are reinforcing the fundamental error that human beings have no limits to fulfilling
their unlimited desires.
To clarify further the implications of this more theological question in the area of
economics, I wish to quote from two texts. The first is from Leonardo Boff:
Confronted with an economy of unlimited growth directed toward accumulation, we have to move
toward an economy of sufficiency, which focuses on the life of the human person and of nature, the
participation of all in the production of the means of living, and solidarity with those persons and
those creatures that have lived or suffered through pathological and harsh subsistence conditions. It
must also focus on a life that sets great store on tenderness and respect for all creation.11

That statement relates directly to our theme and expresses well the position of many
Christians and persons of good will who are striving for a more just and sustainable
world. The problem is that in this imaginary new society, there is no room for conflict.
It is as if the sole basis for this new society were solidarity. In other words, it is implicitly
assumed that our well-intentioned desire for a society based solely on solidarity will
become a reality in the future.
Jan Pronk, in his turn, states:
11

Leonardo Boff, Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1995, p. 28.

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Without an effort to change, the world is bound to go through many more conflicts. By its very
nature, development is change. In any society there are always people with a vested interest in
maintaining the status quo next to people who would benefit from change. . . . That means that
conflict is inherent to development. This conflict may be purely economic, but they can also be
political or religious, or tribal or ethnic, or everything at the same time. Development means a
struggle for progress for ever more people and requires a change in the existing power relations in
a society. Such intended change breeds conflict . . . Conflicts cannot be wished away, they cannot be
prevented, only managed and contained, in order to prevent further escalation, for instance from a
more or less economic conflict into something also political and cultural . . . Development goes hand
in hand with conflict. We should aim not at the suppression of conflicts, but of the violence caused
by them.12

Pronk thus expresses the perspective of one who is struggling against the worlds
injustices and desiring changes to overcome present power relationships and wealth
distribution, but at the same time recognizing the limitations of the human condition
and of economic and social systems.
Only a realistic vision of the limitations of the human condition and of social systems
will enable us to understand and accept the establishment of a greed/wealth line and to
produce concrete feasible alternatives.
Witnessing to a spirituality that accepts the human condition
A second major contribution that Christianity can make is in the area of spirituality.
Humans, consciously or unconsciously, seek a deeper meaning to their lives. Capitalism
makes use of this pursuit to increase sales and profits through advertising and marketing. Through these efforts, famous products and brands are presented as bearers of the
infinite or as having a deeper meaning that will fulfil peoples desires for the infinite.
In the ten commandments we find some very useful teaching for us today. The first
commandment to have no other gods and not make idols is in parallel with the tenth
commandment and, through the chiasmus structure, has the same focus or force, commanding us not to covet our neighbours possessions. From ancient days, people have
sought to fulfil their desire to be by possessing something belonging to their neighbour. The intention of the ten commandments is to demonstrate to us that fulfilment
of the desire to be is not to be found in the constant pursuit of consumption, nor in
owning things that others desire, which is basically idolatry. Rather, this fulfilment is to
be found in living in community with ones neighbour. Our being is not to be found in
12

Jan Pronk, Addressing the Defaults of Globalization, in Pamela Brubaker and Rogate Mshana (eds.), Justice Not Greed, WCC
Publications, Geneva, 2010, pp. 2829.

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an object of desire external to ourselves but within ourselves, just as God is not to be
found in material objects or in temples but within us. The desire to be can be fulfilled
only in love for God, who freed the oppressed from slavery, and in love for our
neighbour.
Over against the spirituality of globalized consumerism, the Christian churches should
witness to a spirituality that accepts the human condition and knows that our being
does not consist in possessions, in products, in grand mansions or imposing churches,
but rather lies in loving relationships between people. We read in 1 John 4:12, No one
has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and [Gods] love is perfected
in us. In other words, we human beings cannot attain the infinite (to see God) but we
are able to experience the presence of God among us, to find fulfilment of our infinite
desires, as far as is possible, in relationships of love and solidarity.
Without an alternative and authentic way of becoming human, it is not possible to
expose the spirituality of consumption as perverse and make the greed line understandable and desirable.
Giving voice to those on the periphery
Konrad Raisers text, quoted above, makes an assertion that we need to examine
further: [Greed] falls under strong condemnation. This judgment, of course, does not
concern the natural human striving to improve ones condition, as long as it does not
deprive others of their legitimate share.
This exception in the condemnation of greed is that the desire to improve our standard
of living does not necessarily imply depriving others of what is necessary for them to
live a dignified life. The problem is that in an economy as vast and complex as todays,
people cannot perceive the connection between their desire to improve their standard
of living and the poverty of others. Moreover, people look at the world through the
filter of the media. In the first place, people in a privileged position in society and in the
market do not usually see the suffering of the poor elsewhere in the world, because
the poor are not part of their world. Second, even when they do see the poor, they do
not manage to understand that there is a connection between their comfort and
privilege and the suffering of others.
Thus, a basic task for the Christian churches and for ecumenical organizations is to give
visibility to the lives of those living on the periphery or outside the system, and then to
make it possible for their voices to be heard by the privileged. Actually seeing the people
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who are suffering and hearing their cry (Ex. 3:7) can lead people to want to understand
the connection between their desire to improve their standard of living, their pattern of
consumption and the suffering of the poor. In that way, people will be better able to
perceive that the spirituality of consumption is dehumanizing and to opt for a more
humane way of life that holds together their human condition and their pursuit of
being in relationships of solidarity.
Translated from the Portuguese, Language Service, World Council of Churches.

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