”For a root of all the evil is the money-love, which some longing were led astray from the faith and pierced through themselves by many pains.”
-Money-love. Money-love. Philarguria. Not Philadelphia - which is brotherly love. Nope. This is Philarguria. A much nastier place. A far more heinous place to live. When you’re living in Philarguria, it’s all about money. Sho me the money! The mighty dollar. Just one dollar more. Gotta get me as much as possible, while the gettin’s good, cuz I gotta fill me some heart hole, and this stuff just doesn’t seem to do the trick. It’s more like cotton candy - looks promising, but then it still leaves me feeling empty. AND in the neighborhood of evil. Cuz this stuff really doesn’t just grow on trees, and I am most likely going to have to shuffle some priorities in order to acquire mass quantities of it.
-That’s right, this hood has all kinds of evil coming out of it. Evil - as the antithesis of good - is that which gives rise to man’s inhumanity to man in all its manifestations. And even as I use that term, I am aware that that which we describe as inhuman, unhumane, is actually MORE human than it is divine. It would be more akin to animal, more dog-eat-dog and living on base instinct, survival of the fittest, anything goes and all that. So, sub-human, no doubt, but entirely human. Fallen humanity. And you’ve got that in spades in Philarguria.
-But here’s the point, when I love money, when I am longing for money, I will prioritze and value that over people, and (more importantly) over God. I am going all in for money. I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. I become the personification of greed, and like Gordon Gekko, I declare that greed is good. Greed - intense selfish desire for more, usually money - is good, because I love money, money is good, and I can’t get enough of it. Literally. You will never have enough. This is how those who live in Philarguria wander away from devotion to Christ and pierce themselves through with much grief. Because you will devote yourself to accumulating more and more, as much as possible, you will cut corners, you will devalue the worth of people as well as the Lord in the process, relegating them to the realm of the afterthought. Money will come first in your heart and first in your pursuits and yet still you will never have enough. You will never know the feeling of really being full, of having enough. A grievous pursuit.
-And think about it, think about all the evil in the world, man’s sub-humanity to man, to his brother or sister. Isn’t so much of it related to greed? When not driven by revenge, greed is what drives people to injustice and corruption and theft more than just about anything else.
-Philarguria may as well be called Jonesville - cuz all those Joneses live there, with whom I’m always trying to keep up. And the strange thing is that when I am moving to Philarguria, I think it is an oasis, this place of plenty in the desert wasteland of life, but in the end it turns out to be a mirage. But it’s a mirage which never dissipates. Usually a mirage on the horizon vanishes as you get closer, and you can never really get to it. But you can move to Philarguria all right - only you will never see it for the mirage that it is. You will wind up wandering its streets, wandering further and further away from the Lord, never able to recognize it for the phantasm that it is. And only the Lord can get you out of that place. He will need to open your eyes to the empty ghost town that it is, give you a divine dissatisfaction with the futility of living there, in Philarguria. The home of money-love. And when your eyes are opened, don’t just stand there. Run. Fly, you fools! Flee. Next verse...
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