"God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full--there's nowhere for him to put it." - Augustine
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| Greed |
In 2005, a Pakistani high school science teacher Syed Sibtul Hassan
Shah went to Dubai. When he returned to his hometown, he convinced his
neighbours to give him their savings, which he doubled in seven days,
based on a stock program he'd learned in Dubai. Word spread of the
"Double Shah." People began investing with him; in eighteen months, he
took in $880 Million from 3,000 people and was considered the next
political leader from the area. When police arrested Shah on charges of
robbery in 2007, thousands of people descended to the streets to protest
against his arrest. In January 2012, he was sentenced to 14 years in
prison after he pleaded guilty.
Greed is the obsession with
accumulating material goods. A greedy person values these goods more
than anything else - our greed can never be satisfied. Greed and
slothfulness have similarities - the greedy and slothful both crave
material goods, with no desire to work for it. The slothful will not
work even for basic necessities. The greedy will use deception to
acquire stuff, will lie or use false pretenses to acquire things. At the
expense of others.
