For as the love of money is the root of all evil (cf. 1Tim. 6:10), so Salvian understood that virtues fall away and lead to great vice once avarice is embraced; for coming out of avarice we not only find plunder as a means of attaining great wealth, but likewise, sister vices which either encourage further avarice (such as envy) or encourage someone to use their wealth for the sake of inordinate pleasures (such as lust):
Because today instead of these pristine virtues, avarice, greed, plunder, and whatever is associated with them have replaced them. To these vices are joined, as by sisterly unity, envy, enmity, cruelty, lust, shamelessness, and destruction, because the former vices fight by using the latter.[1]
The Christian faith had made its way into Rome, transforming society, encouraging virtue; but soon after, those who held great wealth quickly abandoned Christian social teaching while claiming to hold to the Christian faith. They resembled, as all rich who claim to embrace Christianity but reject its moral teachings resemble, the “lovers of self” that St. Paul warned would arise in the latter days:
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. (2Tim. 3:1-5 RSV).
Having a form of religion but denying its power is indeed what can be seen in those who hold to Christian doctrines without following the Christian praxis. They do not love God, but they love what the appearance of being religious gain for them in society all the while acting contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Their conceit, their unholy, inhumane treatment of others, should tell us to avoid them, but what do we see instead happening? They often become embraced by so many so-called Christians because of their wealth and power. This is exactly what we have seen with Donald Trump as many have come to defend him claiming him to be the “next Constantine the Great.”
How can someone whose greed has led to a business history riddled with corruption and whose personal life is riddled with his unending lust, who might at times speak of Christianity but yet make it clear that he does not think his way of life is wrong and needs forgiveness, be seen as anyone other than the kind of person St. Paul said we are to avoid? How can Christians stand next to him and not fear what is to come?
While some might suggest Trump is a new man, that he is different, it is easy to see he has not changed his ways. As President, his greed is uncontrollable; he uses the United States as his plaything, using it to make war against business rivals instead of seeking the common good. His fight with Amazon is but one of many fights he has made against American corporate interests. It is not that he is fighting to right wrongs, but rather, his interest is personal, thinking he can use the power invested in him to combat rivals, damaging the American economy in the process. He wants to make winners and losers with his tirades; as Scott Reed of the US Chamber of Congress reported, this has made business leaders fearful and feel intimidated, fearing reprisals if they criticize any of Trump’s decisions.[2] Obviously, this also fuels Trump’s international trade wars; they are not helping the American consumer nor American workers and businesses; his tariffs are already harming farmers as well as the steel industry, which he claimed he was trying to help. The war is for Trump’s private concerns, not for the common good; he has been warned about the harm he will cause, but he does not care, because he sees the profit he can have in the chaos which ensues.
Avarice is, as Salvian indicated, a form of idolatry:
Of all the other serious and mortal diseases which the old and most foul serpent breathes upon you with the terrible envy of his death-dealing rivalry and the most loathsome breath of his poisonous mouth, I do not know whether any other can undo you with a disease more bitter for faithful souls, and a stigma more loathsome for your children, than avarice. It is slavery to idolatry – a vice which many among you think of little account, when, without the fruit of mercy and kindness, you give yourselves in this life to possessions committed to you by God for a holy deed, and extend your sin even into the future after death.[3]
This is what has enslaved not only Trump, but many of his supporters; their greed and desire for gain leads them against the common good, and so they create for themselves the judgment which is to come because they have forsaken mercy and kindness for a little earthly gain. If the people of the United States continue to back them up, they will likewise suffer, because what they have brought into the world and do not stop will have negative consequences for many years to come.
[Image=he Father and Mother by Boardman Robinson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]
[1] St. Salvian, “The Four Books of Timothy to the Church. Book I” in Salvian the Presbyter. Trans. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, Ph.D (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1962), 270.
[2] One can easily say this has brought into place a proto-fascist state which will quickly become fully fascist if nothing is done to stop Trump.
[3] St. Salvian, “The Four Books of Timothy to the Church. Book I,” 269.
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