IS PROFIT PROFANE, PER SE?

IS PROFIT PROFANE, PER SE? Saturday, January 25, 2014 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Growing up without the material things that one desires can be especially difficult in a country with a capitalist economy or country. Therein one’s acculturated material desires are continually stoked, commercial after commercial, everywhere, by practically everybody. It can be unseemly profane. The seed of want is sown carefully and repeatedly in childhood at Christmas with jolly ole Santa Claus. “What do you WANT for Christmas?” he asks each child, echoing thereby, that child’s kin, peers, and friends who ask the same question. This spirit of want can be burdensome and cruel, if it morphs into covetousness, which is obsessively ‘wanting’ to the point of distraction. One’s “wants” can never be satisfied, because there is always so much more to want. “Hyper-wantism” ensues and warps values. Warped values on an adult level are projections of those from the childhood level, vastly multiplied. One purportedly warped value is the profit motive. But, is the profit motive profane, per se, or of itself? Is profit unworthy or, even, ignoble? It has evolved bad names or synonyms, like: lucre, avarice, rapacity or greed. These very bad, synonymous names are imputed to profit, by those who have “profited” most themselves, ironically! But, is this true or a fair conception of ‘profit’? Let us examine scripture. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, only to lose his own soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Jesus asks in Mark 8:36-37. Herein, Jesus balances profit, world and soul at once. This wondrous triad –profit, the world and one’s soul--must be balanced to attain joy, peace, and love. Elsewhere, in 1 Tim. 6:10, it is said that “the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” “Coveting,” it appears, is the problem, not the money itself. Distortion, or inversion, of one’s values is the problem, not the money; that is what causes one to “pierce” oneself “through with many sorrows.” One of the Ten Commandments admonishes man not to ‘covet.’ It says: “17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. Exodus 20:” To desire something or someone inordinately or culpably is to covet. “Inordinate desire” is imbalance, is sickness, is spiritual derangement. “Inordinate desire” or ‘coveting’ can pertain to many things, other than money, that belong to another; that are not yours: wives, houses, ox’s, asses, manservant, maidservant, or modern their equivalents. So, if having money is not evil by itself, neither is acquiring money necessarily evil, either. Therefore, neither is profit evil by itself. Anything or anyone can be abused or abusive: sunlight, water, air, food, shelter, clothing, love, faith, or money. All of these things are essential to life, and to the very good life! #30