Taiwan Church News

3361 Edition

July 25 - 31, 2016

Editorial

Spiritual Destitute Begets Greed; Greed Begets Affliction

Taiwan society was in a big shock, after US$ 2.6 millions (NT$ 83 million) were robbed via an unprecedenteddirect hacking from 41 automated teller machines(ATM) of First Commercial Bank in Taipei and Taichung on July 9 and July 10. Though most suspects of an international criminal group had left Taiwan before this heist was exposed, there were still three suspects got caught after several days of intensive investigation by the police. This case, therefore, was announced cracked down and huge amount of stolen money were consequently traced back from the mountainous area at Nei-hu district of Taipei City.

When most of the stolen money were under way to be chased back, a strange case related to this bank robberyhappened unexpectedly before the suspect was brought back to the site where those stolen cash were hid: some of those stolen cash were fetched home for 16 hours by one Taipei citizen, though these money were handed out to the police finally. As this extra event was weirdly unreasonable on several points, the person who brought the stolen cash home due to his own greed was charged furiously by the public as committing the crimes of "encroachment" or "transfer or deposit the stolen goods".

If the suspected person, who picked up the stolen money, could report to the police and hand out the cash immediately, such strangecase might have never occurred to anyone's mind. In addition, both the police officer who identified the robbery criminal and the unexpected guy who bumped into the stolen cash would be greatly saluted with great honor.

Fundamentally speaking, either the criminal case of ATM robbery or the extra case of fetching the stolen cashhome, they were realistic events demonstrating the human weakness and sin. Both those foreign ATM robbers and the suspected person taking booties home could not escape the old saying: "Spiritual destitute begets greed; greed begets affliction".

In the Bible, there are also many stories proving this old saying, "Spiritual destitute begets greed; greed begetsaffliction". Those biblical characters do not only covet for wealth, but also hunger for fame, power, women and etc. From the Genesis of the Old Testament to the early church in the New Testament, it is not difficult to find Jacob(avaricious after fame and wealth), Achan (acquisitive for trophy), Samson and David(lustful for women), Absalom(covetous for power), Ananias and Sapphira(cheat the church) and etc.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox,or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor"(Exodus 20:17), these words are the last commandment of the Decalogue. The reason, why God stipulates the law of "do not covet" as the last commandment, is that he knows well the sin of covetousness would definitely begets all those evils forbidden by the previous nine commandment like replacement of God with greed, idol worshiping, fake witness, burglary and etc.

In addition, we could not afford to be negligent about what the scripture had clearly warned us: "Keep your livesfree from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he said 'I will never leave you or forsake you.'"(Hebrews 13:5)!