First off, I want to thank everyone SO much for welcoming me back so warmly. It really feels good to know that I was not forgotten while I was in the Twilight Zone. I am slowly making the rounds to everyone that I know of, as well as trying to get to all of you wonderful new people who have dropped by (THANKS!! ), so bear with me. Chasing a two-year-old around all day does not leave too much time for surfing. That said, can we FINALLY get on with the last two sins? I have been sinning FOREVER! (Hah, don’t print that.)

Greed

Interesting. Of course each and every one of us feels greed at one time or another. The extreme desire to have something, any way you can get it. The conviction that we NEED this thing in order to go on with our lives. But do we? Do we really? Society today is so focused on THINGS. Buy this, own that now, you need this, don’t you want that, everyone has one. Playstation, GameBoy Advance, DVD, CD-RW’s, big screen televisions, satellite dishes, stereos, bigger and better cars, cell phones, pagers, digital cable, computers, cable modems, toys that basically play with themselves, don’t even need the kid, everything better, easier, more expensive. Where does it end? And what, exactly, do we REALLY need? And how do we find that out with all the outside forces telling us what THEY think we need? Sometimes it feels like greed is almost impossible to avoid.

I have that problem sometimes. Luckily for me, I don’t have nearly enough money to be really greedy. Plus, I have kids. They keep me grounded. But a few times I head into the big, brightly beckoning department store, and walk out bewildered, wondering just how those things managed to jump into my cart, and how my money managed to jump so quickly out of my purse. And the guilt sets in. Guilt that I shouldn’t have spent it, that my eyes were too big for my wallet, and what the HECK did I need a new shower curtain for anyway, when the old one was still perfectly good? But perhaps I am lucky. At least I HAVE the guilt. I have a friend who constantly proclaims that she won’t spend this or that money that she has, only to go out to the store a few days later, spending another hundred or so dollars, yet constantly justifying it to herself and anyone else that will listen how much she NEEDED to have nothing less than a 27 inch television, how her daughter really NEEDED another dozen pairs of socks. I wonder if all she really needed was someone to care? Someone to listen? Someone to fill her spiritually, emotionally?

Remember the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis? It has been brought to light before that the seven books of the Narnia series are representative of the seven deadly sins. Nowhere is this premise better illustrated than in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I love the example of the uselessness of greed that it portrays. The following is from a paper by Dr. Don W. King, whose analysis doesn’t need much improvment.

“In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Lewis emphasizes greed, pictured in the thoroughly obnoxious Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Eustace, besides being entirely egocentric and totally selfish, is greedy beyond bounds. His greed and its consequences provide the central episode of the tale. After an exhausting storm drives Eustace and his shipmates to an island where they intend to replenish their supplies, Eustace, feeling picked on, slinks away to the center of the island where, to his shock, he encounters a dying dragon. He watches the dragon breathe its last gasp and begins “to feel as if he had fought and killed the dragon instead of merely seeing it die.” Eustace is then driven by a fierce rainstorm into the dragon’s lair where he discovers the dragon’s rich hoard. Delighted with his find, Eustace greedily stuffs his pockets with diamonds and slips a large diamond bracelet above his elbow. Once he realizes he can carry no more, he falls asleep upon a pile of golden coins.

When Eustace later awakens because of a pain in his arm, he sees before him a dragon’s claw. Much to his consternation he notices that whenever he moves, the claw moves. At first he thinks the dead dragon’s mate has come to avenge its death, but soon he realizes the truth. “He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself” (75). His transformation, of course, explains the pain in his arm: “the bracelet which fitted very nicely on the upper arm of a boy was far too small for the thick, stumpy foreleg of a dragon.” The pain this causes serves as an appropriate reminder to Eustace of his greed.

In Eustace Lewis illustrates the negative, egocentric effect greed has upon an individual. Such a person is useless (Eustace) to himself and to society. The greedy person is only interested in elevation of self and is more than willing to use others for his own advantage. Fortunately for Eustace he “sees” the light and is re-transformed, though only through an extremely painful experience. Unable to shed his dragon skin himself, Eustace submits to the fierce claws of Aslan and is reborn a new, whole person.”

Penned by: Tricia | 9 Comments »